Anti-Patterns

What are Anti-Patterns

Anti-patterns are commonly occurring software design and architecture problems, which are widely recognized and documented. They are common mistakes made during the software development process that lead to suboptimal, faulty, or inefficient solutions. Anti-patterns often result in reduced maintainability, scalability, and performance, and are characterized by symptoms such as poor design, complex code, and high costs of change.

They are often seen as the opposite of design patterns, which are best practices that have proven to be effective in solving common design problems. Examples of anti-patterns include God object, spaghetti code, and feature creep.

Overall an anti-pattern is a common solution to a problem that is ineffective and creates more problems than it solves. It is a pattern of behaviour or approach that appears to be useful in solving a problem, but in reality creates more issues and is not a recommended practice.

God Object

The "God object" (also known as the "Monolithic object") is an anti-pattern in software design where a single class tries to take on too many responsibilities and becomes overly complex, tightly coupled, and hard to maintain.

This can lead to a poorly structured and unreadable codebase, which can lead to increased development time and decreased maintainability.

Instead, it's better to follow the principles of separation of concerns and single responsibility, breaking down the functionality into smaller, more focused and maintainable classes.

Here's an example of a "God object" class written in C#:

public class GodObject 
{ 
   private Database database; 
   private Network network; 
   private UserInterface userInterface; 

   public GodObject() 
   { 
      this.database = new Database(); 
      this.network = new Network(); 
      this.userInterface = new UserInterface(); 
   } 

   public void SaveData(string data) 
   { 
      this.database.SaveData(data); 
   } 

   public string GetData() 
   { 
      return this.database.GetData(); 
   } 

   public void SendData(string data) 
   { 
      this.network.SendData(data); 
   } 

   public string ReceiveData() 
   { 
      return this.network.ReceiveData(); 
   } 

   public void DisplayData(string data) 
   { 
      this.userInterface.DisplayData(data); 
   } 

   public string GetUserInput() 
   { 
      return this.userInterface.GetUserInput(); 
   } 
}