Code Smell 93 — Send me Anything

Magic functions that can receive a lot of different (and not polymorphic arguments)

Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

TL;DR: Create a clear contract. Expect just one protocol.

Problems

• Fail Fast principle violation
• Error prone
• Readability
• If polluting
• Nulls
• Bad Cohesion

Solutions

1. Take just one “kind” of input

2. Arguments should adhere to a single protocol.

Sample Code

Wrong

Right

Detection

We can detect this kind of methods when they do different things, asking for the argument kind.

Tags

• If Polluter

Conclusion

Magic castings and flexibility have a price. They put the rubbish under the rug and violate fail fast principle.

Relations

Code Smell 69 — Big Bang (JavaScript Ridiculous Castings)

Code Smell 06 — Too Clever Programmer

Code Smell 12 — Null

Referential transparency is a very desirable property: it implies that functions consistently yield the same results given the same input, irrespective of where and when they are invoked.

Edward Garson

Software Engineering Great Quotes

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

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