Congratulations! You’ve finished this journey through the six most important characteristics of simple object-oriented design:
- Small units of code
- Consistent objects
- Proper dependency management
- Good abstractions
- Properly handled infrastructure
- Well modularized
In this chapter, I discuss a few pieces of advice that I also consider essential to keep object-oriented designs as simple as possible. Some were briefly mentioned in previous chapters but are so important that I’ve dedicated a separate section to them.
It’s easy to get stuck in an infinite loop of design improvements, especially for engineers who appreciate a well-designed system. Even simple design decisions can branch out into numerous possibilities.
Striving for the best possible design is essential for a highly maintainable, simple object-oriented system. But it’s important to remember that our primary goal is not to write beautiful designs but rather to deliver functional software as efficiently as possible. A good design enables that goal, but it’s not the end. Finding the right tradeoff between exploring the perfect design and settling for a good-enough design is a challenging task that improves with experience over time.