The Gang of Four & Their 23 Legendary Design Patterns

Ever heard of the Gang of Four (GoF)? No, they’re not a rock band. They’re the legendary software engineers—Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides—who wrote Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.

Back in 1994, they basically said, “Hey, let’s stop reinventing the wheel and give developers reusable solutions to common coding problems!” And just like that, they gave us 23 design patterns that still shape modern software development.

These patterns are divided into three categories:

Creational Patterns – “How do we create objects the smart way?”

1. Factory Method
2. Abstract Factory
3. Builder
4. Prototype
5. Singleton

Structural Patterns – “How do we structure our code efficiently?”

• Adapter
• Bridge
• Composite
• Decorator
• Facade
• Flyweight
• Proxy

Behavioral Patterns – “How do objects talk to each other?”

• Chain Of Responsibility
• Command
• Interpreter
• Iterator
• Mediator
• Memento
• Observer
• State
• Strategy
• Template Method
• Visitor

Over the next 23 days, I’ll break down each of these patterns in the simplest way possible—no academic mumbo jumbo, just clear and fun explanations.

Stay tuned! I’ll update this article with links as I post each one.