1. Game Programming Patterns From the book by Robert Nystrom http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com

2. What is a design pattern? Wikipedia: a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object- Oriented Software, by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides (1995).

3. A few bits of advice that I hope may be useful to you: Abstraction and decoupling make evolving your program faster and easier, but don’t waste time doing them unless you’re confident the code in question needs that flexibility. Think about and design for performance throughout your development cycle, but put off the low-level, nitty-gritty optimizations that lock assumptions into your code until as late as possible. Move quickly to explore your game’s design space, but don’t go so fast that you leave a mess behind you. You’ll have to live with it, after all. If you are going to ditch code, don’t waste time making it pretty. Rock stars trash hotel rooms because they know they’re going to check out the next day. But, most of all, if you want to make something fun, have fun making it.

4. Nystrom’s book discusses 19 patterns: Design Patterns RevisitedSequencing Patterns Command Double Buffer Flyweight Game Loop Observer Update Method Prototype SingletonDecoupling Patterns State Component Event Queue Optimization Patterns Service Locator Data Locality Dirty FlagBehavioral Patterns Object Pool Bytecode Spatial Partition Subclass Sandbox Type Object