Which statement describes the Factory design pattern?

• A. It defines a family of interchangeable algorithms.
• B. It encapsulates a chain of responsibility for handling requests.
• C. It creates objects without exposing the instantiation logic; for example, ShapeFactory.create('CIRCLE') returns a Circle instance.
• D. It ensures a class has only one instance.

Answer: (C)

Centralizing object creation so the caller doesn’t know the exact class being instantiated is the essence of the Factory pattern. A factory method takes input (for example, 'CIRCLE') and returns an instance that implements a common interface, with the concrete type chosen inside the factory. This is exactly what ShapeFactory.create('CIRCLE') demonstrates, returning a Circle instance behind the scenes. The benefit is decoupling the code that uses the objects from the code that creates them; if you add new shapes or switch implementations, you can do so without changing client code. It also makes it easier to manage complex creation logic in one place. The other descriptions describe different patterns: one concerns selecting among interchangeable algorithms (Strategy), another is about passing a request along a chain of handlers (Chain of Responsibility), and another ensures only a single instance of a class exists (Singleton).