Is design pattern teaches how to design an application?

Many of them think that if a person knows design pattern (the theory), he/she can design an application; due to this misunderstanding many stupid questions been asked in interviews about design pattern in a meaningless way.

In my view design pattern doesn’t teach how to design. It creates a design language where one can communicate his/her design to others; similar to UML. Don’t try to design your application from design patterns; instead design your application without design pattern influence, then correlate your thoughts with design patterns just for presenting your design ideas to someone else.

Now you may ask “how to learn designing an application”. There are two approaches I could think of: a) trial and learn from mistakes. b) Learning from existing application from senior while working on that project. If you get chance to learn from mistakes it is good but that  might lead into financial disaster. The best option is learn from your senior and apply your innovative/intuitive thoughts.

Another common misunderstanding on design pattern is between J2EE design pattern and GoF design pattern. Some of them calling GoF design pattern as core Java design pattern. I don’t know where they learn the term “Core Java Design Pattern”.