Code Smell 190 - Unnecessary Properties

Stop thinking of data as attributes. They are only needed to back your behavior

TL;DR: Don't focus on accidental properties. You won't need many of them.

Problems

• Anemic Models

• Properties bloating

• YAGNI violation

Solutions

• Create attributes only to support your methods (behavior).

Context

Whenever they want to model a person or an employee, junior programmers or students add an attribute 'id' or 'name' without thinking if they are really going to need them.

We need to add attributes 'on-demand' when there's enough evidence. Objects are not 'data holders'.

Sample Code

Wrong

class PersonInQueue

  attr_accessor :name, :job

  def initialize(name, job)
    @name = name
    @job = job
  end

end

Right

class PersonInQueue

  def moveForwardOnePosition
    # implement protocol
  end
end

Detection

[X] Semi-Automatic

We can detect unused attributes.

But in many cases, we need an excellent designer to validate the actual need.

Tags

• Anemic

Conclusion

Start designing your objects from the protocol.

Add attributes only when needed.

Relations

Code Smell 144 - Fungible Objects

Maxi Contieri ・ Jun 25 '22

#webdev #beginners #programming #tutorial

Code Smell 01 - Anemic Models

Maxi Contieri ・ Oct 20 '20

#codenewbie #oop #beginners #computerscience

Code Smell 40 - DTOs

Maxi Contieri ・ Dec 2 '20

#oop #programming #tutorial #codenewbie

Code Smell 109 - Automatic Properties

Maxi Contieri ・ Dec 7 '21

#oop #webdev #codenewbie #tutorial

Credits

Photo by Melanie Pongratz on Unsplash

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Object thinking focuses our attention on the problem space rather than the solution space.

David West

Software Engineering Great Quotes

Maxi Contieri ・ Dec 28 '20

#codenewbie #programming #quotes #software

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This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky parts of your Code

Maxi Contieri ・ May 21 '21

#codenewbie #tutorial #codequality #beginners

Comments

[Jan Küster]

Hey Maxi, have you considered writing a (maybe open licensed) book as a definitive summary of this series?

[Maxi Contieri]

yes. indeed :)