aha: avoid hasty abstractions

2021-09-11

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~1 min read

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101 words

Determining when to abstract is one of the constant challenges of engineering.

Abstracting too soon often creates as many problems as abstracting concepts too late.

Sandy Metz has been talking and writing about this since 2014, e.g., The Wrong Abstraction.

Kent C. Dodds adopted Sandy’s philsophy in his AHA Programming. AHA being an acronym for Avoid Hasty Abstractions.

A useful contribution to the land of acronyms, AHA slots nicely into conversations about abstraction and is useful in mitigating the worst excesses of the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) movement - and to a lesser extent, even the WET (Write Everything Twice) one.


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