Code Smells : Dispensable

Continuing on our discussion on Code Smells and Refactoring techniques, we will discuss Dispensable in this post.

Dispensables are avoidable components whose absence would make the code much more cleaner, readable and efficient.

Comments

A joke is not a good one if needed to be explained. A similar philosophy holds for code as well. If you feel that the code requires comments to understand, then it is better to refactor  it such a way that it eliminates the need of comments.

You could start with refactoring techniques like Rename Method, Rename Variable, along Extract Variable and Extract Method. Quite often using asserts (introduce assertions) can also aid in increasing the readability of the code.

Duplicate Code

When you have a larger team, there is a distinct possibility that two developers working different parts of the project might end up developing similar/same method. The similarity could could be subtle as well, where similarity is visible to only in certain parts of code, while performing the same job.

Extract Method, Extract superclass and Extract class are some of the refactoring methods that can be applied. If two methods do same job but using different algorithms, refactoring techniques like Substitute algorithm (Strategy Pattern) can be applied. Similarly, if the duplicated code is only visibly similar, but isn’t quite identical, Form Template Method technique (Template Method Pattern) can be applied.

Lazy Class

There could exist classes in your code which has become obsolete or the functionalities are near-useless, you could employee techniques like Inline Class to remove it.

Maintaining code is expensive and any unused code should be carefully eliminated.

Data Class

Classes are identified by two factors – Properties and Behaviours.  If you stumble upon a class that has only properties, then it is a good candidate for Data Class code smell.

 The first step you need to take is to review the client code that uses the class, and review if the functionality could exist in the Data Class itself. You could also review if the conventional collection such as Arrays could be used to store the Data in the class, thus eliminating the need for class.

Dead Code

Dead Code is often resultant of changing requirements/specifications, and a development team that was unsure/lazy to clean up the code. A good IDE such as the Visual Studio can aid in detecting such code and can be eliminated.

Remember, it doesn’t need to be a method, the dead code could also be a unused parameter, which can be eliminated using the Remove Parameter refactoring technique.

Speculative Generality

How often have we been guilty of creating functionality in anticipation of future requirements, but ended up never having to use them ? It is a common trait in teams, which is highly infectious and needs to be avoided. XP Principles like YAGNI, KISS can be highly useful in this regard in educating the team to avoid such pitfalls.

Refactoring techniques such as Collapse Hierarchy an Inline class can be used for eliminating such code.