Questions tagged [object-oriented-design]

Object-oriented design is the process of planning a system of interacting objects for the purpose of solving a software problem.

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Is it wrong to use a boolean parameter to determine behavior?

I have seen a practice from time to time that "feels" wrong, but I can't quite articulate what is wrong about it. Or maybe it's just my prejudice. Here goes: A developer defines a method with a ...
Ray's user avatar
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215 votes
16 answers
32k views

Do we really need OO languages to manage software complexity?

This is going to be a very non-technical, soft question and I am not sure if this is the right platform. But I am a beginning CS student so I hope you guys tolerate it. In the first semester we were ...
steakexchange's user avatar
168 votes
17 answers
290k views

Is it better to return NULL or empty values from functions/methods where the return value is not present?

I am looking for a recommendation here. I am struggling with whether it is better to return NULL or an empty value from a method when the return value is not present or cannot be determined. Take ...
P B's user avatar
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164 votes
7 answers
113k views

What really is the "business logic"?

I'm working with web development since 2009, when I started with PHP. When I moved to ASP.NET, I've heard a lot about DDD and OOAD where a lot of focus is given to this "business logic" and &...
user1620696's user avatar
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152 votes
14 answers
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Did the Gang of Four thoroughly explore "Pattern Space"?

Ever since I first learned about the Gang of Four (GoF) design patterns, at least 10 years ago, I am having the impression that these 23 patterns should be only a small sample of something much larger ...
Frank Puffer's user avatar
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152 votes
12 answers
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Is this a violation of the Liskov Substitution Principle?

Say we have a list of Task entities, and a ProjectTask sub type. Tasks can be closed at any time, except ProjectTasks which cannot be closed once they have a status of Started. The UI should ensure ...
Paul T Davies's user avatar
123 votes
12 answers
31k views

Why would Square inheriting from Rectangle be problematic if we override the SetWidth and SetHeight methods?

If a Square is a type of Rectangle, than why can't a Square inherit from a Rectangle? Or why is it a bad design? I have heard people say: If you made Square derive from Rectangle, then a Square ...
user793468's user avatar
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110 votes
13 answers
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How do you justify more code being written by following clean code practices?

Moderator note This question has already had seventeen answers posted to it. Before you post a new answer, please read the existing answers and make sure your viewpoint isn't already adequately ...
Pablo Gonzalez's user avatar
104 votes
9 answers
20k views

Why should I use dependency injection?

I am having a hard time looking for resources on why I should use dependency injection. Most of the resources that I see explains that it just passes an instance of an object to another instance of an ...
Daniel's user avatar
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99 votes
9 answers
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Is it the correct practice to keep more than 10 years old spaghetti legacy code untouched without refactoring at all in big product development?

I have been in two software product houses for three years in a row. The first is a small company maintaining a fairly small management system with a monolithic legacy code base (almost twenty years). ...
Rui's user avatar
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98 votes
4 answers
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Rich Domain Models -- how, exactly, does behavior fit in?

In the debate of Rich vs. Anemic domain models, the internet is full of philosophical advice but short on authoritative examples. The objective of this question is to find definitive guidelines and ...
RJB's user avatar
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81 votes
11 answers
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Why is base-for-all-objects discouraged in C++

Stroustrup says "Don’t immediately invent a unique base for all of your classes (an Object class). Typically, you can do better without it for many/most classes." (The C++ Programming Language Fourth ...
Matthew James Briggs's user avatar
79 votes
10 answers
16k views

How functional programming achieves "No runtime exceptions"

How does a functional programming language, such as Elm, achieve "No runtime exceptions"? Coming from an OOP background, runtime exceptions have been part of whatever framework that is based ...
Fireburn's user avatar
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74 votes
9 answers
27k views

Are classes with only a single (public) method a problem?

I am currently working on a software project that performs compression and indexing on video surveillance footage. The compression works by splitting background and foreground objects, then saving the ...
Yong Jie Wong's user avatar
73 votes
10 answers
8k views

My proposed design is usually worse than my colleague's - how do I get better? [closed]

I have been programming for couple of years and am generally good when it comes to fixing problems and creating small-to-medium scripts, however, I'm generally not good at designing large scale ...
user151193's user avatar
68 votes
8 answers
14k views

When to *not* use SOLID principles

Coming from a math background, counterexamples are equally, if not more, helpful to me for understanding concepts than examples. I've seen many, many examples of when and how to use the SOLID ...
Derek Allums's user avatar
65 votes
12 answers
12k views

Having a flag to indicate if we should throw errors

I recently started working at a place with some much older developers (around 50+ years old). They have worked on critical applications dealing with aviation where the system could not go down. As a ...
Nicolas's user avatar
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59 votes
5 answers
31k views

Using public final rather than private getters

I see most immutable POJOs written like this: public class MyObject { private final String foo; private final int bar; public MyObject(String foo, int bar) { this.foo = foo; ...
Cory Kendall's user avatar
56 votes
11 answers
4k views

What is meant by, "A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or Security system should."

The example used in the question pass bare minimum data to a function touches on the best way to determine whether the user is an administrator or not. One common answer was: user.isAdmin() This ...
GlenPeterson's user avatar
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55 votes
7 answers
23k views

Why is chaining setters unconventional?

Having chaining implemented on beans is very handy: no need for overloading constructors, mega constructors, factories, and gives you increased readability. I can't think of any downsides, unless you ...
Ben's user avatar
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53 votes
3 answers
72k views

Where to put business logic in MVC design?

I have created a simple MVC Java application that adds records through data forms to a database. My app collects data, it also validates it and stores it. This is because the data is being sourced ...
BriskLabs Pakistan's user avatar
52 votes
3 answers
114k views

How to solve circular dependency?

I have three classes that are circular dependant to each other: TestExecuter execute requests of TestScenario and save a report file using ReportGenerator class. So: TestExecuter depends on ...
sabrina2020's user avatar
51 votes
4 answers
16k views

Exception propagation: When should I catch exceptions?

MethodA calls an MethodB which in turn calls MethodC. There is NO exception handling in MethodB or MethodC. But there is exception handling in MethodA. In MethodC an exception occurs. Now, that ...
Daniel Frost's user avatar
50 votes
7 answers
10k views

Why is inheritance bad in a Person-Student model?

I've just started learning about Inheritance vs Composition and it's kind of tricky for me to get my head around it for some reason. I have these classes: Person class Person { public string Name {...
Octavian Niculescu's user avatar
49 votes
3 answers
8k views

Using a "Pass-through (God) Service" is bad, right? [duplicate]

My team has developed a new service layer in our application. They created a bunch of services that implement their interfaces (E.g., ICustomerService, IUserService, etc). That's pretty good so far. ...
Vin Shahrdar's user avatar
45 votes
6 answers
14k views

Passing functions into other functions as parameters, bad practice?

We've been in the process of changing how our AS3 application talks to our back end and we're in the process of implementing a REST system to replace our old one. Sadly the developer who started the ...
Elliot Blackburn's user avatar
43 votes
10 answers
6k views

How do unit tests facilitate design?

Our colleague promotes writing unit tests as actually helping us to refine our design and refactor things, but I do not see how. If I am loading a CSV file and parse it, how is unit test (validating ...
User039402's user avatar
43 votes
5 answers
13k views

Why inherit a class without adding properties?

I found an inheritance tree in our (rather large) code base that goes something like this: public class NamedEntity { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } } public ...
robotron's user avatar
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42 votes
8 answers
11k views

Class that does not represent anything - is it correct?

I am just designing my application and I am not sure if I understand SOLID and OOP correctly. Classes should do 1 thing and do it well but from the other hand they should represent real objects we ...
Alicja Głowacka's user avatar
42 votes
9 answers
4k views

Programming for future use of interfaces

I have a colleague sitting next to me who designed an interface like this: public interface IEventGetter { public List<FooType> getFooList(String fooName, Date start, Date end) ...
sveri's user avatar
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42 votes
2 answers
57k views

Why is inheritance generally viewed as a bad thing by OOP proponents [duplicate]

I keep hearing the phrase "Favour Composition over Inheritance" from GoF, which is being annoyingly mentioned repeatedly by my friend, who thinks it is a valid blanket statement. But is it ...
RonaldMunodawafa's user avatar
41 votes
6 answers
10k views

Should I create a class if my function is complex and has a lot of variables?

This question is somewhat language-agnostic, but not completely, since Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is different in, for example, Java, which doesn't have first-class functions, than it is in ...
iCanLearn's user avatar
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40 votes
6 answers
30k views

Why avoid Java Inheritance "Extends"

Jame Gosling said “You should avoid implementation inheritance whenever possible.” and instead, use interface inheritance. But why? How can we avoid inheriting the structure of an object using ...
newbie's user avatar
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39 votes
13 answers
13k views

Is it wrong to use a boolean parameter to determine values?

According to Is it wrong to use a boolean parameter to determine behavior?, I know the importance of avoid using boolean parameters to determine a behaviour, eg: original version public void ...
ocomfd's user avatar
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38 votes
7 answers
15k views

Should I still follow "programming to an interface not implementation" even if I think using concrete class members is the simpler solution?

According to Understanding "programming to an interface", as I understand, I think I should depend on abstract class only. However, in some case, for example, Student: public class Student {...
aacceeggiikk's user avatar
38 votes
2 answers
44k views

How to design a scalable notification system? [closed]

I need to write a notification system manager. Here is my requirements: I need to be able to send a Notification on different platforms, which may be totally different (for exemple, I need to be ...
Trent's user avatar
  • 497
36 votes
9 answers
9k views

When writing object-oriented code, should I always be following a design pattern?

Is there a conceivable design pattern for any object-oriented program? I ask this because recently I saw an implementation of a Door class with a Lock. It was part of a test and the answer said that ...
user2030677's user avatar
36 votes
8 answers
3k views

Is OOP becoming easier or harder? [closed]

When the concepts of Object Oriented Programming were introduced to programmers years back it looks interesting and programming was cleaner. OOP was like this Stock stock = new Stock(); stock.addItem(...
tunmise fasipe's user avatar
34 votes
10 answers
25k views

Interfaces on an abstract class

My coworker and I have different opinions on the relationship between base classes and interfaces. I'm of the belief that a class should not implement an interface unless that class can be used when ...
Bryan Boettcher's user avatar
32 votes
6 answers
6k views

How do I test a system where the objects are difficult to mock?

I am working with the following system: Network Data Feed -> Third Party Nio Library -> My Objects via adapter pattern We recently had an issue where I updated the version of the library I was ...
durron597's user avatar
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31 votes
3 answers
3k views

Is a "start", "run" or "execute" method a good practice?

I'm currently working on a code base that has many classes that implement a Start method. This seems like two-phase construction to me, which I had always considered a bad practice. I can't tell the ...
Dave Hillier's user avatar
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31 votes
17 answers
8k views

What is the value in hiding the details through abstractions? Isn't there value in transparency?

Background I am not a big fan of abstraction. I will admit that one can benefit from adaptability, portability and re-usability of interfaces etc. There is real benefit there, and I don't wish to ...
31 votes
6 answers
13k views

Can you implement "object-oriented" programming without the class keyword?

Say we want to provide an abstraction of an "account" in a bank. Here's one approach, using a function object in Python: def account(): """Return a dispatch dictionary representing a bank account....
overexchange's user avatar
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31 votes
10 answers
6k views

Does logging inside a class violate the SRP?

I wrote a class that takes a Logger class as one of its arguments: class QueryHandler: def __init__(self, query: Query, logger: Logger) -> None: self.query = query self.logger =...
pstatix's user avatar
  • 1,017
31 votes
9 answers
29k views

Are init() methods a code smell?

Is there any purpose for declaring an init() method for a type? I'm not asking whether we should prefer init() over a constructor or how to avoid declaring init(). I'm asking if there is any ...
Dioxin's user avatar
  • 943
30 votes
7 answers
13k views

Is it a code smell to set a flag in a loop to use it later?

I have a piece of code where I iterate a map until a certain condition is true and then later on use that condition to do some more stuff. Example: Map<BigInteger, List<String>> map = ...
Siddharth Trikha's user avatar
30 votes
5 answers
7k views

Do unit tests sometimes break encapsulation? [duplicate]

I very often hear the following: "If you want to test private methods, you'd better put that in another class and expose it." While sometimes that's the case and we have a hiding concept ...
user1288851's user avatar
30 votes
10 answers
5k views

How would Functional Programming proponents answer this statement in Code Complete?

On page 839 of the second edition, Steve McConnell is discussing all the ways that programmers can "conquer complexity" in big programs. His tips culminate with this statement: "Object-oriented ...
dan's user avatar
  • 2,273
29 votes
6 answers
8k views

Is there a design pattern to remove the need to check for flags?

I'm going to save some string payload in the database. I have two global configurations: encryption compression These can be enabled or disabled using the configuration in a way that either only one ...
Damith Ganegoda's user avatar
29 votes
6 answers
9k views

Visitor Pattern: what's the point of the `accept` method?

I'm trying to fully understand the visitor pattern. What I've learnt so far (correct me if I'm wrong) is: It's about adding operations to classes, without modifying the source code of those classes. ...
bgusach's user avatar
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