In software development, a design pattern is a repeatable solution to a widespread problem, since it is ubiquitous to solve the same problems you have encountered before. There are two main advantages of design patterns. The first advantage is that they are proven solutions, and the second one is that they create a communication platform between developers. With these advantages, templates and specifications have been formalized over the years to create a knowledge and experience pool.

Software development is seen as a relatively young and evolving field of study; however, most of the problems solved in various circumstances are similar. For instance, it is common to create a single instance component in various software systems, such as payment systems, log managers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or online games. Therefore, making use of past collected knowledge helps development teams to advance rapidly.

Design patterns and corresponding business requirements could seem artificial and only software-related. However, both problems and solutions have roots in real life. For instance, the singleton pattern is proposed as a best practice for implementing a configuration manager. With the same approach in mind, the adapter pattern is proposed as a best practice to work with both versions of the APIs. As its name implies, it is a similar approach in real-life to using electrical adapters to work with the different plug and socket types in various countries. As these examples indicate, software design patterns and the ideas behind them all come from real-life experiences.

There are two main uses of design patterns. First, design patterns create a common platform for developers with their terminology. For example, during a technical discussion, let's assume that a design decision is made to use a single instance of a component. All other developers, at least the ones that are aware of design patterns, will not need any further information considering the properties of the singleton pattern. Although this looks trivial, it is an enrichment of communication, with the best practices of technical expertise. Secondly, knowing and leveraging best practices in engineering makes it easier to advance rapidly. Let's imagine that you are designing a car – you should always start by inventing the best wheel possible first. This makes the process faster and eliminates the gains of learning from past
mistakes.

Design patterns are classified in three ways. With new technologies and programming languages always emerging, new groups are proposed, but the main idea of classification remains the same – the interaction between their controllers
and other applications:

To sum this section up, design patterns are formalized best practices that have roots in both real-life and software design. They create a common communication platform for developers, and they are a valuable source of knowledge as a collection.
In the following chapter, design patterns for Kubernetes are presented as best practices for creating, managing, and deploying modern cloud-native applications.