Comments on: Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – You’re Doing it Wrong!

By: Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – Utils Class | Chris Missal's Blog

Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – Utils Class | Chris Missal's Blog — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:50:59 +0000

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By: Chris Missal

Chris Missal — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:14:06 +0000

@Daniel
I agree with point 1, extension methods can greatly reduce the number of utility methods you need. I try to resort to these last though. They’re cool, but something about them still feels weird to me.

By: Daniel Fisher

Daniel Fisher — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:41:30 +0000

1) Since extension methods are in place there mustn’t be Util-Classes!

2) When you talk about what is already there – take what is in the platform: System.Diagnostics

Daniel

By: inampaki

inampaki — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:06:11 +0000

This is Really Cool n Helpfull for me

By: Rodrigo Asensio

Rodrigo Asensio — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:27:04 +0000

I had made an entire set of utilities classes starting from a toolkit.
Toolkit.network().ping(host);
Tookit.strings().padLeft(blabla);
Toolkit.validation().isValidEmail(email)
Toolkit.java().newInstance(packageName, className)

and that is the way my utilities works. they are well documented and ordered (they are like 22 classes providing common funcionality)

By: Chris Missal

Chris Missal — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:40:21 +0000

@Ben

Like I said, I wish I had designated Utils as Part 1, but there’s a post coming. :) It (hopefully) explains it better than my short single paragraph summary above.

By: Ben Nadel

Ben Nadel — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:32:56 +0000

@Chris,

Maybe it would be better to use a concrete example when it comes to Utils. Let’s say we have a language that doesn’t have a “trim” method for strings (ex. Javascript). In that case, someone might wrap trim() up into a Utils object or global function (which is just part of the Window object). How would something like this be better organized?

By: Chris Missal

Chris Missal — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:14:00 +0000

@sboulay

All I can tell about your StringUtils is that it does something with strings. It’s not much better than a class that is called Utils, which I have no idea what it would do.

By: Chris Missal

Chris Missal — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:08:58 +0000

I wish I had chosen the Utils class to be part 1. This seems to be the most interesting to people. You can have a utils-like class. Frank brought up the ReflectionHelper class in Structuremap. That’s a good example of “doing it right” I suppose; all the functionality is related to reflection. The post isn’t going to necessarily be all about this type of behavior being bad, but the abuse that comes from it.

Like Cartel1 points out, the Utils Class anti-pattern is usually a result of taking the path of least resistance and being lazy, that’s how it is abused.

By: sboulay

sboulay — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:04:21 +0000

“In the software world, you’re probably going to come across a class with this name at some point. What does it do? Nobody knows, that’s why it exists. When you see a Utils (or Utility) class, its existence is probably due to laziness or lack of domain knowledge.”

Are you talking about a class literally named “Utils”. What about StringUtils, DateUtils, RequestUtils etc? I would hardly consider those ” laziness or lack of domain knowledge”.