[pohl]

I'm tired of design patterns, too. One of my favorite quotations these days is Brendan Eich's paraphrasing of a sentiment attributed to Peter Norvig: “Design patterns are bug reports against your programming language”.

That said, if you can write a rant of this length on the topic without once mentioning how they facilitate higher-bandwidth communication between team members, you're missing something.

Asking about design patterns in an interview is not a secret handshake. Instead, you are being tested to see whether you're just bringing your own programming talents in isolation, or whether you're also bringing along the force-multiplier of communication.