Speculative Generality.md

Speculative Generality

Tags: code smell

Inverse:
Collapse Hierarchy
Inline Class
Inline Function
Change Function Declaration (Rename Function)
Remove Dead Code

You get it when people say, “Oh, I think we’ll need the ability to do this kind of thing someday” and thus add all sorts of hooks and special cases to handle things that aren’t required.

Speculative generality can be spotted when the only users of a function or class are test cases.