As a Java engineer in the web development industry for several years now, having heard multiple times that X is good because of SOLID principles or Y is bad because it breaks SOLID principles, and having to memorize the “good” ways to do everything before an interview etc, I find it harder and harder to do when I really start to dive into the real reason I’m doing something in a particular way.
One example is creating an interface for every goddamn class I make because of “loose coupling” when in reality none of these classes are ever going to have an alternative implementation.
Also the more I get into languages like Rust, the more these doubts are increasing and leading me to believe that most of it is just dogma that has gone far beyond its initial motivations and goals and is now just a mindless OOP circlejerk.
There are definitely occasions when these principles do make sense, especially in an OOP environment, and they can also make some design patterns really satisfying and easy.
What are your opinions on this?
Yep, streams, pipes and files are all good examples of things that are an entity with associated operations.
Those are very powerful abstractions for sure, but did you notice how far their implementation is from standard Java OOP?
That’s because polymorphism at a macro-level is a functional concern, not something programmers speak in conferences about.
One of my biggest gripe with Y2K-style OOP is that its proponents make lots of promises that don’t track in practice when you measure the outcomes. One such promise is that writing rigid class hierarchies lead to the potent abstractions you describe.