Anti-patterns and code smells

Anti-patterns and code smells are architectural bad practices or tips about possible bad design. Learning about best practices is as important as learning about bad ones, which is where we start. There are multiple anti-patterns and code smells throughout the book to help you get started.

Anti-patterns

An anti-pattern is the opposite of a design pattern: it is a proven flawed technique that will most likely cause you some trouble and cost you time and money (and probably give you a headache or two along the way).

An anti-pattern is a pattern that seems to be a good idea and that seems to be the solution you were looking for, but that in the end will most likely cause more harm than good. Some anti-patterns started as legitimate design patterns and were labeled anti-patterns later. Sometimes, it is a matter of opinion, and sometimes the classification can be influenced by the programming language.

Let’s look at an example next. We...