The best and most useful role that I have found for design patterns is to use them to systematically synthesize the code directly from the design as part of a v

The best and most useful role that I have found for design patterns is to use them to systematically synthesize the code directly from the design as part of a very well defined methodology. This is very well described in the MIT OCW 6.005 Elements of Software Construction course, 2008 version [1]: "Most SE courses teach design patterns as a big catalog. Instead, we’re going to learn the patterns that are relevant to moving from behavioral design to code for each of the paradigms.". The point here is that you don't just pluck a design pattern out of thin air in an ad-hoc fashion, where every GoF pattern is a potential candidate, but rather you first do behavior driven design following well defined steps in one of 3 paradigms (state machine, functional or OO, you can mix and match of course), build a model, and only when you are ready to start coding do you map each key design element to code by choosing from a reduced set of suitable design patterns. The point of the patterns is to make much of the coding almost automatic by directly translating the design to code. In particular in [2] when the design is in the state machine paradigm (machine as class (Singleton), as object, state as object (State), as enumeration), when the design is in the functional paradigm [3,4] (Composite, Interpreter and Visitor, variant as class, Facade) and the OO paradigm [5] (relation as field, relation as map, subset as boolean field) [1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-005-elements-of-software-construction-fall-2008/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu... [2] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-005-elements-of-software-construction-fall-2008/lecture-notes/MIT6_005f08_lec05.pdf https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu... [3] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-005-elements-of-software-construction-fall-2008/lecture-notes/MIT6_005f08_lec11.pdf https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu... [4] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-005-elements-of-software-construction-fall-2008/lecture-notes/MIT6_005f08_lec15.pdf https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu... [5] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-005-elements-of-software-construction-fall-2008/lecture-notes/MIT6_005f08_lec19.pdf https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...