Design Patterns in Ruby #4: Simple Factory vs Factory Method

When building applications, creating an object is rarely as simple as calling User.new. Different objects may require different initialization logic, validation, external API calls, or configuration. If every class is responsible for deciding what object to create, this logic quickly becomes scattered throughout the codebase. Factory patterns solve this problem by separating object creation from object usage, making the code easier to maintain and extend. Let's look at the two most common app