I have not been a person that like banding around with techno terms and trying to confuse people. I would not even call myself a geek, I like computers but I have a Fiancée and a life away from the screens (Yes I find two is a minimum as a developer). I have been working in development from almost 10 years now and I have work on many projects in many languages, during this time I have collected a number of experiences and some, like design patterns become part of the Toolkit. What is a toolkit you ask, in my definition a tool is bits of information that is

a.) Worth remembering
b.) You will need again in the future
c.) Will help you be a better person (or at least programmer)

This is not my concept I read it in Steven Kings “On Writing” and was happy to find a concept that was so truly universal. My toolkit contains the tools that I have gathered over the years that have been learned via bad experiences, good experiences and looking at the work of those gifted with greatness. I take each tool out to use sometimes, clean it off a bit and put it back in the kit.

A design pattern is in simplistic terms, a standard solution to a common architectural problem in software development. In essence however we see patterns every day, a red sign means danger. That is a pattern that is so ingrained that you don’t even need to read the text on the sign to know that there is something to be careful of. If you wanted to create a sign to warn people, chances are it would be red! There is no need for you to come up with a pink one, and if you did, in the long term it might have been the wrong decision. 

I like patterns as they are nothing to do with computer languages or frameworks as such and therefore you don’t have to get into a Java .Net debate. You can happily sit with a programmer of another language drinking beer and discussing patterns till the cows come home. Should you ever been in the unfortunate position to have maintain something for someone else, if they have used design patterns you will get to terms with the code a lot more quickly.

This is worth looking at for more info. I’m not Wikipedia you know ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns_(book).

Good article:

http://www.developerfusion.com/article/8307/aspnet-patterns-every-developer-should-know/

For those of you who know about it, sorry for covering old ground.
For those that have just got a masters degree in information technology, “You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes!”