Simple Object-Oriented Design

2 Making code small

This chapter covers

• Breaking large units of code into smaller pieces
• Moving new complexity away from existing units of code
• Documenting your code to improve understanding

Complex code is harder to read and understand than simple code. As a developer, you’ve likely experienced the mental strain of deciphering a 200-line method compared to a 20-line method. You feel tired even before you begin to read it. Highly complex code is also more prone to bugs. It’s easier to make mistakes in code that’s difficult to grasp. It’s also hard to write tests for complex code, as it has too many possibilities and corner cases to explore, and it’s too easy to forget one of them.

Making code simple and small is the first thing you should ...