Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)

Very useful for languages that use classes, like Synopsys VMMM framework for SystemVerilog.

"Design Patterns" provides an excellent introduction to design patterns through a running example using a number of different patterns. Further it provides very well-structured descriptions, diagrams, and example source code for the 20some widely used patterns in its catalog.

This book gives a nice overview of what high-level abstractions to think about, mostly when writing new software. It is used extensively as a college undergraduate textbook for team-approach programming courses in order to supply a vocabulary for student discussions. Some of the concepts are outdated by now (2006), and are not domain-specific enough for some purposes, but as an overview or first approach to the subject of patterns it is the gold standard.

This book was discussed in the C# Users Group I belong to. It is probably a book I should have read a long time ago. It is well written and is excellent at describing when and how to use these fundamental Patterns. A book every OO programmer should read.

This was the first patterns book, this was the book that started the "patterns" movement... A must have for anyone interested in Software Design Patterns.

Contains all the essential patterns, nicely organized =)