SOLID Without the Acronym: It's Just Cohesion and Coupling

Dionisio Cortes Fernandez — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:15:56 +0000

SOLID isn't really five independent principles. It's mostly two long-standing design ideas, wearing five names.

High cohesion — keep the things that change together, together.
Low coupling — depend on stable abstractions, not volatile details.

Four of the five letters are named consequences of those two forces, and the fifth comes with an asterisk. Here's the first cut:

Force	Principles
Cohesion	SRP, ISP
Coupling	OCP, LSP, DIP

It's only a first cut. ISP is contested: the textbook files it under coupling, and its section shows why both readings are right. LSP is the asterisk. It sits under coupling because callers couple to the base contract, never to your subtype, but it isn't a dial you can turn too far. It's a correctness constraint, which makes it a detector rather than a design choice.

Once you see the two forces, you stop memorizing and start deriving, including when not to apply each letter. Every one of them has a cost, and SOLID applied without judgment produces its own kind of unmaintainable code.

Every example lives in one system, the checkout slice of a payments product: CheckoutService.checkout(cart) prices the cart, charges a payment method through a gateway, records the order and returns a result. The domain forces each principle, and you'll watch them repair each other. For each one: what it means, where it shows up, and what over-applying it costs.

S — Single Responsibility

Definition. A class should have one reason to change. The version that actually helps: one reason to change means one actor, one group of people who can ask for that change.

Here the broken version is a CheckoutManager with total() and renderReceipt(). It feels like one thing ("checkout"), but total() answers to Finance, which runs a 10% loyalty discount, and renderReceipt() answers to Marketing, which runs a points program and prints the lines that earned points. Both programs cover the same lines today, so they share one helper. Two actors, two reasons to change, one class: that's the smell.

class CheckoutManager(private val cart: Cart) {

    fun total(): Money =                             // answers to Finance
        cart.items.sum() - loyaltyDiscount()

    fun renderReceipt(): LoyaltyReceipt =            // answers to Marketing
        LoyaltyReceipt(cart.id.value, total(), rewarded = rewardedItems())  // "points earned on…"

    private fun loyaltyDiscount(): Money =           // Finance's discount...
        rewardedItems().sum() / 10                   // 10% back on rewarded items

    private fun rewardedItems(): List<Line> = ...    // ...and Marketing's points: one list, the trap
}

Here's how it goes wrong. Finance asks you to stop discounting gift wrap. A developer edits rewardedItems(), the obvious place, and Marketing's receipt silently stops listing gift wrap under "points earned on," which nobody in Marketing asked for. The total moves exactly as Finance wanted (a smaller discount, every item still charged), so the diff looks correct. Review misses it: the class has one name and one obvious topic, but that private helper couples two departments.

The fix is a split you already know. In a layered app the controller changes with the API shape, the service with a business rule, the repository with storage: three reasons, three classes. Here the same instinct fires inside the service layer: PriceCalculator for Finance, ReceiptFormatter for Marketing, CheckoutService for the flow.

Each class gets its own copy of "which lines count": Finance's skips gift wrap, Marketing's doesn't. DRY says merge them, but they're two actors' rules that merely agreed for a while, and merging them is what caused the bug. Martin calls this accidental duplication: code that looks the same but changes for different reasons isn't really duplicated. SrpTest pins both behaviors: the smell's one edit moving discount and receipt, and the split's two rules disagreeing. Whenever "who asks for changes to this?" gets two answers, you're looking at two classes wearing one name.

The trade-off. Fowler's Refactoring names both failure modes as smells. Under-apply SRP and you get the god class and its symptom, divergent change: one class edited for many unrelated reasons. Over-apply it and you get shotgun surgery: one logical change spread across ten tiny files, because you scattered things that change together. The dial is cohesion. Split by "these change for different reasons," never by "this method feels different."

If you remember one thing: SRP is the cohesion force. Too little separation and you get the god class; too much and you get shotgun surgery. The question is never "how small can this class be," it's "do these parts change for the same reason?"

O — Open/Closed

Definition. A class should be open for extension, closed for modification: you add behavior by adding a class, not by editing an existing, tested one. The enemy is the if/else that grows a branch with every new payment method:

// Every new payment method = reopen this function and risk the branches already here.
fun charge(type: String, amount: Money): PaymentResult {
    if (type == "card") {
        ...
    } else if (type == "paypal") {
        ...
    } else if (type == "bizum") {
        ...
    }   // <- edit working code, again
    ...
}

Polymorphism buys you OCP: depend on an abstraction, and add an implementation instead of a branch.

interface PaymentMethod {
    fun charge(order: OrderId, amount: Money): PaymentResult
}   // closed

class CardPayment : PaymentMethod { ... }
class PaypalPayment : PaymentMethod { ... }
class BizumPayment : PaymentMethod { ... }        // adding one = a NEW file

New behavior is now a new file, almost. Something still maps "bizum" to BizumPayment, and you'll add that line; here it's PaymentMethodRegistry, wired in the composition root at the end. OCP doesn't delete the choice, it concentrates it: out of tested business logic, into one registration line with no logic to break. Closed for modification never meant "zero edits anywhere," only "no edits where the behavior lives."

That pays off because the axis of variation was known: you expected new payment methods. Where the opposite holds, you want the opposite tool.

The inverse case: closed variation. PaymentResult is what checkout() and every PaymentMethod.charge() return:

sealed interface PaymentResult
data class Approved(val txn: TxnId, val amount: Money) : PaymentResult
data class Declined(val reason: String)               : PaymentResult
data object Timeout                                   : PaymentResult
data class Conflict(val reason: String)               : PaymentResult   // paid already, other terms

fun record(result: PaymentResult) = when (result) {
    is Approved -> ...
    is Declined -> ...
    Timeout     -> ...
    is Conflict -> ...  // add a variant → this 'when' stops compiling
}

OCP wants a new variant to touch nothing. A sealed type wants a new variant to break every exhaustive when at compile time, because for a closed set you own, like an order's states or a payment's outcomes, a silently unhandled case is the bug. Only an exhaustive when gets that protection: an else branch opts out, and so does an if (result is Approved). That's why CheckoutService, which decides whether an outcome leaves an order behind, decides with a when. (Java has the same pair: sealed types in 17, JEP 409, and the exhaustive pattern switch in 21, JEP 441.)

Payment methods are an open set anyone may extend: OCP and a registry. Payment results are a closed set you define: a sealed type. One domain, both answers; choosing per axis is the judgment. The trade even has a name, the expression problem (Philip Wadler, 1998): an open interface makes a new variant cheap and a new operation expensive, because every implementation has to grow the method, and a sealed type flips both. The LSP section shows the expensive direction, when refund gets bolted onto every PaymentMethod.

The trade-off. OCP up front is indirection on a guess: premature abstraction (YAGNI). You get an interface with one implementation forever, a plugin system for plugins that never arrive, and readers chasing the interface to find where the work happens. Wait for the second case: that's when OCP starts paying for the indirection instead of just charging you for it.

If you remember one thing: OCP is a coupling principle. It decouples what varies (the implementations) from what's stable (the code that uses them). Add a class, don't edit one. But don't add the interface before the second thing needs it, and when the set is closed, invert the whole idea and let a sealed type break every exhaustive when on purpose.

L — Liskov Substitution

Definition. A subtype must be usable anywhere its base type is expected, through a base reference, with no surprises (Liskov & Wing's behavioral subtyping, 1994). The reframing that matters: extends isn't a code-sharing mechanism, it's a published claim, "every promise the parent makes, I keep."

The expensive promises aren't in method signatures. They're properties that hold for an object's whole lifetime, like "balance is never negative" or "the captured amount never exceeds the authorized amount." Callers assume them without checking, which is their whole value and why breaking one costs so much. Broken promises come in two forms, and they fail in opposite ways.

Form 1 — the silent wrong answer. Our system can issue store credit (it's where gift-card refunds land, as you'll see):

open class StoreCredit {
    protected var credit: Money = Money(0)   // the promise: credit >= Money(0), always
    fun balance(): Money = credit            // the promise, observable by every caller
    fun topUp(amount: Money) {
        require(amount >= Money(0))          // every way in guards the promise
        credit += amount
    }
    open fun redeem(amount: Money) {
        require(amount >= Money(0))
        if (amount > credit) throw InsufficientCreditException()
        credit -= amount
    }
}

class VipStoreCredit : StoreCredit() {       // "let VIPs spend past their balance"
    override fun redeem(amount: Money) {
        require(amount >= Money(0))          // same guard as the parent...
        credit -= amount                     // ...but the promise is gone: no exception, just debt
    }
}

Callers written against StoreCredit assume balance() never goes negative, after any sequence of calls: reconciliation, the balance the app shows, the liability line Finance reports. Hand them a VipStoreCredit and they're all wrong at once, with no exception, no crash, and not one changed line of their code. Quietly incorrect is the expensive kind of wrong.

The guards matter too. topUp and redeem refuse negative amounts, and Money throws on overflow instead of wrapping. Without them, a plain StoreCredit could go negative by itself, and the example would blame inheritance for the parent's own bug. The subclass keeps the guard, so breaking the balance promise is the only thing it does wrong.

Form 2 — the loud refusal. Checkout grows refunds, and in this product gift cards can't take them (a business rule of this example, not of payments in general). The obvious move widens the strategy for everyone:

interface PaymentMethod {
    fun charge(order: OrderId, amount: Money): PaymentResult
    fun refund(txn: TxnId)                    // widened for everyone
}

class GiftCardPayment : PaymentMethod {
    override fun charge(order: OrderId, amount: Money): PaymentResult {
        ...
    }   // fine
    override fun refund(txn: TxnId) =
        throw UnsupportedOperationException("gift cards cannot take refunds")
}

val method: PaymentMethod = registry.resolve("giftcard")
method.refund(txn)                            // boom — at runtime, in prod, on refund day

The type promises something the object refuses to do, and the refusal arrives at runtime instead of compile time. At least it announces itself. Throwing isn't the violation on its own: a contract that allows refusal is kept by refusing. This one promised refunds to every caller, so the refusal breaks it. The fix is to stop claiming the contract:

interface PaymentMethod {
    fun charge(order: OrderId, amount: Money): PaymentResult
}
interface RefundableMethod : PaymentMethod {
    fun refund(txn: TxnId)
}

RefundableMethod extends PaymentMethod in the only safe direction: a method that can also refund keeps every promise a charge-only view makes, never the reverse. Gift cards implement only PaymentMethod, so there's no refund on them to call and nothing to throw.

In the repo, that fix carries real weight:

Refunds enter by order. The order knows which method took the money and which transaction to reverse, so nobody can pair a card's refund with a gift card's charge.
The capability is asked, not assumed. Methods arrive by name, so one question stays at runtime: can this one refund? PaymentMethod.refundable() promises only an answer, and null keeps that promise; RefundableMethod answers with itself. That names a contract, not a class, unlike the is GiftCardPayment patch below, so a new refundable method touches nothing.
It survives wrappers. An as? RefundableMethod stops at a PaymentMethod by inner wrapper, quietly turning every card refund into store credit. by forwards the question to the card inside.
Gift cards settle in store credit. A gift-card order comes back NotRefundable, and SupportCreditFlow issues store credit instead: the class whose promise you just watched a subclass break.
Each order settles once. The order records its settlement, so a second press of the refund button answers AlreadySettled and moves no money.

What repaired the broken contract was segregating the interface, which happens to be the next letter. The principles aren't five separate rules; they repair each other.

The trade-off. LSP isn't a dial: nothing is "too substitutable," and it can only be kept or broken. Keeping it has a price, and the price lives in the contract. You can weaken the base contract until every subtype can keep it, as java.util.Collection does: its Javadoc marks add and remove as optional operations that may throw UnsupportedOperationException, so an unmodifiable list keeps the contract by refusing, and every caller handles a refusal the type allows. Or you keep the contract strong and split it, as RefundableMethod did, and pay in interfaces: ISP's explosion. Weaker promises or more types: that's the real dial.

What LSP rules out is the third option, patching the caller. if (method is GiftCardPayment) skipRefund() fixes the wrong answer by breaking OCP, so now two principles are broken instead of one. That's LSP's real job in your toolbox: it detects bad inheritance. When a tempting IS-A can't honor the full contract, stop inheriting. Narrow the contract until every implementation can keep it, or hold the object in a field instead of extending it.

If you remember one thing: LSP is a coupling principle. Callers couple to the base contract, and every subtype must be safe behind it. No surprises through a base reference. It's not a dial, it's a detector: when IS-A can't keep the contract, don't inherit. The dial it leaves you is in the contract itself: weaker promises or more types.

I — Interface Segregation

Definition. No client should be forced to depend on methods it doesn't use. The key word is client: you segregate by role, one interface per kind of caller, not by chopping an interface into pieces. Ask "who calls this, and which slice do they actually need?", never "how many methods is too many?"

// One implementation may serve every role...
class StripePaymentGateway : PaymentGateway, PaymentReader { ... }

// ...but each client sees only the contract its role needs.
interface PaymentGateway {                        // the role that moves money
    fun charge(req: ChargeRequest): PaymentResult
    fun refund(txn: TxnId)
}
interface PaymentReader {                         // the role that looks at it
    fun transactions(range: DateRange): List<Txn>
}

class StatementsScreen(private val payments: PaymentReader) { ... }                // can't move money
class CardPayment(private val gateway: PaymentGateway) : RefundableMethod { ... }  // can't read statements

The implementation didn't split; the view of it did, and the benefits are concrete:

The statements screen has no charge or refund in scope, so it can't move money by accident. That narrows access rather than proving it (a cast could still reach the other role of the same object), but least privilege by default is what a payments audit asks for.
A change to a charging signature no longer touches any read-only client.
The test double for StatementsScreen stubs one query method instead of a whole PSP (payment service provider).

The system has now segregated twice, on two different questions: RefundableMethod by what an implementation can truly promise, this split by the role a client plays. They compose. RefundFlow decides a refund is allowed (capability, on the domain method), then CardPayment carries it out through PaymentGateway.refund (mechanism, on the port). No client gets the raw port: RefundHandler, the support desk's refund button, holds RefundFlow. Handed PaymentGateway instead, it could refund any transaction, gift cards included, without asking.

The symptom to look for. An adapter full of no-ops means the interface above it was never cut by role. The repo has a quiet version: the checkout tests' fake gateways only ever charge, yet each one stubs refund as a no-op. One stub per fake is the cheap end of the dial, and splitting PaymentGateway over it would be the explosion described next. When the fakes stub three or four methods, cut.

The trade-off. Over-apply ISP and you get interface explosion: a hundred one-method interfaces, every call site holding a different name for the same object, and nobody able to say what the thing is anymore. That's SRP's failure pair one level up: the fat interface is the god class of contracts, and fragmentation is their shotgun surgery. ISP is SRP applied to interfaces, with the same dial: segregate by the client roles that actually exist, not by method count. Two roles mean two interfaces. Five methods don't mean five interfaces.

The textbook files ISP under coupling, and Robert C. Martin's own formulation backs it: "clients should not be forced to depend upon interfaces that they do not use" (The C++ Report, 1996), because forcing them "results in an inadvertent coupling between all the clients." Both framings are right; they answer different questions. What segregation buys is decoupling. What tells you where to cut is cohesion: the roles whose methods change together.

If you remember one thing: ISP is the cohesion force applied to contracts. Split by caller, not by method. Too few cuts and you get the fat interface; too many and you get interface explosion; the dial is the roles that actually exist.

D — Dependency Inversion

Definition. The original formulation has two halves: high-level modules should not depend on low-level modules — both should depend on abstractions; and abstractions should not depend on details — details should depend on abstractions. What gets inverted isn't "now there's an interface." It's ownership: the high-level policy owns the abstraction, and the low-level detail implements it. The test is a single question: which module declares the interface?

// module: domain — the high-level policy OWNS the ports.
// (PaymentGateway and PaymentReader from the last section live here too.)
interface OrderRepository {                      // written in the domain's vocabulary,
    fun find(id: OrderId): Order?                // living in the domain's module
    fun save(order: Order)
}
fun interface Clock {
    fun now(): Instant
}

class CheckoutService(
    private val prices: PriceCalculator,
    private val methods: PaymentMethodRegistry,
    private val orders: OrderRepository,
    private val clock: Clock,
) {
    fun checkout(cart: Cart): PaymentResult {
        ...
    }   // business rules; zero infra imports
}

// module: infrastructure — depends on domain; domain has never heard of it
class StripePaymentGateway(private val client: StripeClient) : PaymentGateway, PaymentReader { ... }
class DynamoOrderRepository(private val db: DynamoDbClient) : OrderRepository { ... }

Follow the compile-time arrow: infrastructure imports domain, so the domain compiles alone, with no Stripe SDK and no AWS on its classpath. That inward arrow is the dependency rule of hexagonal architecture (ports and adapters): the domain owns the port, and infrastructure provides the adapter. Hexagonal adds more than the arrow, such as an explicit application boundary and adapters on both the driving and the driven side, but the arrow itself is DIP at the module boundary. Here it is as the repo's actual layout:

checkout/
  domain/            # no infra imports; a test enforces it
    Money  Cart  Order  Receipt  PaymentResult (sealed)  RefundResult (sealed)
    PaymentGateway  PaymentReader  OrderRepository  Clock      <- ports
    PaymentMethod / RefundableMethod (Card, Paypal, Bizum; GiftCard is charge-only)
    PaymentMethodRegistry  RefundFlow  PriceCalculator  ReceiptFormatter  CheckoutService
    StoreCredit  SupportCreditFlow                             <- where gift-card refunds land
  infrastructure/    # depends on domain; domain has never heard of it
    StripePaymentGateway  StripeClient  InMemoryOrderRepository  Meter  KeyStore
    RetryingGateway  MeteredGateway  IdempotentGateway         <- decorators ('by')
  clients/           # also depends on domain: the callers, not the adapters
    StatementsScreen                                           <- ISP's read-only role view
    RefundHandler                                              <- holds RefundFlow, never the port
  smells/            # the broken examples, compiling, each pinned by a test
    CheckoutManager  VipStoreCredit
  app/
    Main.kt          # the composition root: wires everything; DIP with no framework

Two honest caveats. First, so main runs anywhere with zero credentials, the adapters are an InMemoryOrderRepository and a no-network StripeClient stand-in, not the real Dynamo and Stripe SDKs. The ports can't tell the difference, and that a database can become a map in one line of wiring is DIP's whole claim.

Second, domain and infrastructure are packages in one Gradle project, so the compiler alone wouldn't stop a domain file from importing an adapter. ArchitectureTest does, with two checks:

Imports. A domain/ file may import, or name in full, only the domain, Kotlin, and the JDK's java.time and java.util. The JDK allowance is narrow on purpose: java.sql and java.net.http ship with the JDK too, and they're infrastructure.
Ambient reads. java.lang needs no import, and allowing java.time for Instant also allows Instant.now(), exactly the read the Clock port exists to replace. This check fails on the system clock, System, Runtime, Thread or ProcessBuilder anywhere in domain code.

Both are text scans: a tripwire, not a proof. In a production codebase, make them Gradle subprojects and the build enforces the arrow for you.

The gotcha: DI != DIP. Dependency injection is a mechanism: someone hands objects their collaborators. Dependency inversion is a principle about who owns the abstraction, and you can have either without the other. @Autowired StripePaymentGateway, the concrete class, is DI with zero DIP: a framework injecting your coupling for you. Hand-wiring in main is DI in its purest form, and DIP too, because the domain owns the interfaces being wired. Depend on an interface your own module owns and you have DIP, container or not.

The payoff. Testability, with cause and effect in the right order. You can hand CheckoutService a fake gateway and an in-memory OrderRepository because it depends on abstractions the domain owns. The mock isn't the point; it's the evidence. If you can't test a class without booting the database, DIP is telling you an arrow points the wrong way.

The trade-off. The degenerate form is interface-for-everything: FooService/FooServiceImpl pairs that exist because "we always do it that way," OCP's premature abstraction moved up a layer. Abstract at true frontiers, the I/O boundaries (the database, HTTP, queues, the clock, someone else's SDK) where a second implementation genuinely exists: the real one and the test fake, at minimum. An interface between two classes in the same package that always change together isn't low coupling; it's low cohesion disguised as low coupling.

Every port here sits on such a frontier, Clock included. It's deliberately narrower than java.time.Clock, which is abstract, carries a time zone the domain never reads, and no lambda can implement. The JDK's java.time.InstantSource (Java 17) has the right shape (one method, no zone, lambda-friendly) and would do; the domain declares its own anyway, like every other port, so the policy states its need in its own words. Three lines is the whole price.

If you remember one thing: DIP is the coupling principle at architecture scale. The domain owns the interface, details implement it, arrows point inward. DI is a mechanism; DIP is a direction. Abstract at real frontiers, not everywhere.

The Composition Root

Every abstraction has to become an object somewhere, and in this system exactly one place gets to do it: Main.kt, the file where all five principles stop being prose.

// app/Main.kt
fun main() {
    val meter = Meter()
    val clock = Clock { Instant.now() }   // the domain's own port; java.time.Clock never leaks inward

    // ISP: one Stripe adapter, two roles. The money-moving role gets the decorator stack below;
    // the read-only role gets the adapter itself, since a statement needs no retries and no keys.
    val stripe = StripePaymentGateway(StripeClient(clock))

    // Composition: cross-cutting concerns as a decorator stack. The ORDER is a
    // decision, and it lives here, in wiring, not in a class hierarchy.
    val gateway: PaymentGateway =
        MeteredGateway(
            RetryingGateway(
                IdempotentGateway(stripe, KeyStore()),
            ),
            meter,
        )

    // OCP's real cost, concentrated: one plain line per payment method.
    val methods = PaymentMethodRegistry(
        "card" to { CardPayment(gateway) },
        "paypal" to { PaypalPayment(gateway) },
        "bizum" to { BizumPayment(gateway) },
        "giftcard" to { GiftCardPayment(gateway) },   // claims no refund capability
    )

    // DIP: details handed to a domain that has never heard of them.
    val orders = InMemoryOrderRepository()   // prod: DynamoOrderRepository, same port, one line
    val checkout = CheckoutService(
        PriceCalculator(),                   // SRP: Finance's class, alone
        methods,
        orders,
        clock,                               // the same clock the PSP stand-in stamps with
    )

    // The clients, each holding only the role it plays.
    val statements = StatementsScreen(stripe)                     // ISP: reads, can't move money
    val refundDesk = RefundHandler(RefundFlow(orders, methods))   // LSP: refunds only through the gate
    val storeCredit = SupportCreditFlow(StoreCredit())            // where a gift card's refund lands

    // …then a short demo script plays a customer and the support desk: a card order and a
    // gift-card order, the statement, both refunds, and the card's refund button pressed twice.
    demo(checkout, orders, statements, refundDesk, storeCredit)
    println("logical charges metered: ${meter.count("charges")}")
}

Read it as a checklist:

Composition. The gateway is wrapped three times: IdempotentGateway so an approved order isn't charged again, RetryingGateway so a timed-out call gets another try, and MeteredGateway so someone can count what happened. Each wrapper holds the port, not a concrete class, which is why they stack at all.
Order. Where each wrapper sits is a decision made here. MeteredGateway(RetryingGateway(…)) counts logical charges; RetryingGateway(MeteredGateway(…)) counts attempts. Neither is wrong; they're different metrics, a one-line diff apart. Neither counts PSP calls, though: in both, idempotency sits inside the meter, so a double-click the cache answers still gets metered. To count PSP calls, wrap the Stripe adapter itself.
OCP. The registry: the one registration line the OCP section promised you.
ISP. One Stripe adapter, two roles: CardPayment sees a decorated PaymentGateway, StatementsScreen an undecorated PaymentReader, since a statement needs no retries or keys. Cross-cutting concerns attach per role.
LSP. Details arrive typed as ports (PaymentGateway, not StripePaymentGateway), and refunds reach money only through RefundFlow, which asks each method for the capability.
DIP. No framework in sight: DI in its purest form, down to one clock shared by the domain and the PSP stand-in.
SRP. main holds no business logic, so its single reason to change is "the wiring changed." The demo script lives in a function of its own.

The decorators forward with Kotlin's by inner: delegate the whole port to the wrapped object, then override only what you care about. That's black-box reuse with no fragile base class, at one cost: by forwards whatever it isn't told about. refund already passes through all three layers unmetered, unretried and without a key, and a method added to PaymentGateway tomorrow would slip through the same way, silently. It's the open default, the opposite of a sealed when that makes you decide.

What the idempotency layer can't do. It's a local memory of approvals for calls made one at a time. If the PSP approves but its response never arrives, or two calls race past the cache, only the key sent to the PSP protects you, which is why the Stripe adapter forwards it. Both layers also check what a key is reused for:

Same request: the original answer.
Same order, another amount or method: Conflict, the way Stripe refuses a key reused with different parameters. Otherwise a cart edited after payment would come back "approved" at a total nobody charged.
Why not Declined: a decline means no money moved, and here some may have. If the PSP charged the first attempt but its response never arrived, a charge exists that no order records, and "declined" would tell a customer who paid to pay again. Finding that charge by its key is reconciliation, out of scope here.
Same price, other lines: the PSP only sees amount and method, so swapping size M for L replays cleanly through both layers. Only the domain knows the lines, so CheckoutService compares them with the recorded order and answers Conflict too.

Keying the order has one more price: a real PSP replays the first answer for a key, declines included, so paying another way after a decline needs a new key (order plus attempt number), which the sample leaves out.

What the retry layer won't do. It retries only Timeout, through an exhaustive when: a decline is an answer, not a failure, and asking again only asks the same question. It also retries only a request that carries a key. A Timeout means nobody knows whether the PSP charged, so a keyed retry is safe (the PSP dedupes it) and a keyless one could charge twice. The wired flow always has a key, because an OrderId can't be blank. Add another PaymentResult and that when stops compiling until someone decides whether the new outcome is worth retrying.

Throw Away the Acronym

Here's the whole article as two questions, the two to actually ask in code review:

"Do these things change for the same reason?" — the cohesion question. If yes, keep them together; if no, separate them. SRP asks it about classes, ISP about interfaces.
"If this changes, what else is forced to move?" — the coupling question. OCP asks it about new features (nothing should move: add a class), LSP about subtypes (callers of the base must never notice), DIP about architecture (details move; policy doesn't).

The two feed each other: group what changes together and fewer changes cross a module line, so coupling falls; cut a dependency and each side comes out more focused, so cohesion rises.

One bounded context was enough for all five letters, because the domain forced each one: pricing and receipt copy answer to different departments, new payment methods keep arriving, gift cards can't refund, a statements screen has no business moving money, and checkout has to be testable without a PSP. Here is every dial in one place:

Principle	Under-applied	Over-applied	The dial
SRP	God class	Shotgun surgery	One actor per class
OCP	Growing `if/else`	Speculative interfaces	Wait for the second case; seal what you own
LSP	Broken: `is`-check patches in callers	— (constraint, not a dial)	Can't keep the contract → don't inherit
ISP	Fat interface	Interface explosion	One interface per role
DIP	Domain imports infrastructure	`FooServiceImpl` everywhere	Abstract at true frontiers only

The LSP row reads differently on purpose: a constraint isn't under-applied, it's broken, and the is-check patches are the symptom you see in callers.

Cohesion and coupling aren't SOLID's children; they're its grandparents. Stevens, Myers, and Constantine named the pair in "Structured Design" (IBM Systems Journal, 1974); Parnas nailed the underlying idea as information hiding in 1972; the acronym arrived three decades later. The letters are the most successful marketing campaign those two ideas ever had, though LSP also carries a correctness rule that neither force gives you on its own. Useful as mnemonics, dangerous as a checklist: a checklist tells you to add an interface, and the forces tell you whether the interface bought you anything.

Everything in this article lives in the companion repo: one Gradle project holding the clean slices and the smells package side by side, with a test pinning each claim (the VIP balance really goes negative, the same cart really charges the PSP once, a gift-card order really can't take a refund, the decorator order really changes the metric) and a main() you can run.

DEV Community: Dionisio Cortes Fernandez