Chapter 5
Design 1 – Object Calisthenics
Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The first time I came into contact with object calisthenics was at a meetup in London with my friend Ger Mán. We were so overwhelmed that we decided not to write any tests in order to focus on understanding this concept.
Big mistake!
Without the tests for feedback, we started making small errors that accumulated into a messy code base. The next day, without the pressure of the meetup, we paired up again and calmly worked on the exercise using object calisthenics as best as we could. Finally, it started to make some sense.
When I am coaching software developers, the Object Calisthenics session is usually the first big challenge. Object calisthenics forces people to think differently about software design, not by adding anything, but by removing...
