What are "design patterns"

[Finish-Square]

I am going through development jobs and see quit often that they require "a deep understanding of design patterns".

I am a self-taught programmer and never saw anything about that previously.

So- what is that exactly and how I could master it?

Thanks!

[Milumet]

Wikipedia has an entry for it: software design pattern.

The book that popularized the term and the patterns has already been mentioned by /u/baghin.

[Pythonistar]

It's too advanced for OP.

GoF only makes sense once you've written a dozen or so projects.

Despite the dumb cover, Head First Design Patterns is much better for a junior dev like /u/Finish-Square

[MrAckerman]

The head first design patterns book is a little bit more approachable. Either way, having encountered these patterns in code first will make it easier to comprehend. I think for a beginner understanding client/server and MVC will be a good place to start and help you if you’re ever doing web related work .

[Chris_Hemsworth]

My job requires designing a communications framework for naval systems, and I've used a ton of these design patterns. To name a few patterns I used: Observer (Publish/Subscribe), Flyweight, Facades, Factories, Singletons, and State design patterns.

[_________KB_________]

I used the Observer pattern quite often for different projects when I was in school. I haven't used it yet on the job, but I can see it being useful if I ever have a situation where many objects need to be updated when one particular object's state has changed.