Don't Be Afraid of Types

I found that there’s a slight aversion to creating new types in the codebases I work in. I saw it during my early days while I was working in Java projects, and I see it today in the occasional Go project. Function bodies with lots of local variables, functions that take a large number of arguments or returning a large number of results, extensions to existing types rather than making new ones. It’s a strange phenomenon. I can’t explain why this is. Maybe it’s a fear of feeling like you’re tampering with the “grand design” of the codebase. This is plausible as it was the feeling I had as a junior dev. Afraid to create new classes in Java thinking that I’m introducing a new concept to the project that others had to deal with going forward. _I can add all the verbs I want, but who am _ I to introduce a new noun? This is obviously a ridiculous notion when you think about it for more than a few seconds. If you come up with a concept or a series of values that naturally go together, so mu ... Read full article.