When faced with an API or programming paradigm that requires repetitive, boilerplate code, a developer is left with two options. They may refine or adapt the API/paradigm, using the idioms of their language to make something tedious and verbose into something elegant and clear.

Or they just automate it. If you have a mile of boilerplate that’s mostly the same across the application, just generate that. It’s like copy/paste, but, y’know… automatic.

Which is why Derf Skren found this pile in their codebase:

  public abstract class ExchangeSingleData : IExchangeData
  {
    private readonly string mName;
    private readonly int mLength;

    private Dictionary<string, string> mMapValidData;
    private byte[] mBuffer;

    void AddValidValue(string name, string value) {
        mMapValidData[name] = value;
    }
    //...
    //...
  }

  public class NetChangeSign : ExchangeSingleData
  {
        public const string Plus = "+";
        public const string Minus = "-";

    public NetChangeSign()
      : base("NetChangeSign", 1)
    {
            AddValidValue("Plus", Plus);
            AddValidValue("Minus", Minus);
          }
  }

  public class BidPriceSign : ExchangeSingleData
  {
        public const string Plus = "+";
        public const string Minus = "-";

    public BidPriceSign()
      : base("BidPriceSign", 1)
    {
            AddValidValue("Plus", Plus);
            AddValidValue("Minus", Minus);
          }
  }

  public class AskPriceSign : ExchangeSingleData
  {
        public const string Plus = "+";
        public const string Minus = "-";

    public AskPriceSign()
      : base("AskPriceSign", 1)
    {
            AddValidValue("Plus", Plus);
            AddValidValue("Minus", Minus);
          }
  }

  // ... and 7 more versions of the same class

The goal of this code is so that they can prepend a “+” or a “-” to a transaction’s value. Note the mBuffer in the base class- they don’t use strings (or, y’know… numbers) to represent the transaction value, but a byte array instead. The “value” is that it lets them write a line like this:

lMessage.NetChangeSign.SetValue(GeneratePriceSign(lPrice));

Which allows the instance stored in NetChangeSign to flip that +/- based on the return value of GeneratePriceSign. Obviously, this lets the NetChangeSign instance have full control of the logic of how the sign gets set, right? I mean, each instance has its own map that contains all the allowed values, right? Well… sure, but how do they decide? Based on GeneratePriceSign… which looks like this:

  private static string GeneratePriceSign(Side aSide)
  {
    if (aSide.Equals(Side.Buy))
      return "+";
    else
      return "-";
  }

In design patterns terms, we call this “delebation”. It’s like delegation, but only the person doing it to themselves enjoys it.

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