DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones
AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
11 Monitoring and Observability Tools for 2023
Learn more
  1. DZone
  2. Software Design and Architecture
  3. Microservices
  4. Weasel Words

Weasel Words

Roger Hughes user avatar by
Roger Hughes
·
Sep. 25, 11 · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
Share
5.14K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

The other day I had to look into a project’s source code and shocked by the state it was in. I can, hand on heart, say I haven’t seen code like it for 10 years... which made it interesting.

Everyone, even the most inexperienced programmer seems to be able to look at code and figure out when it’s bad, after all there are obvious signs: for example it’s unintelligible, has lots of repetition through cut ‘n’ paste coding and its class and method names contain weasel words1

Weasel words turn up in both class and method names. Classes usually have weasel words appended to the end of their name, with the most common being Utils, Helper and Processor, for example: GeneralUtils, MiscellaneousUtils, PageHelper and XmlProcessor.

These Utils and Helpers are usually classes that are containers for disparate miscellaneous functions.

Then we move on to weasel word method names, a sure sign that the programmer who wrote the code didn’t understand what she2 was doing. Examples of weasel word method names are:

  • process(...)
  • manage(...)
  • parse(...)
  • fixup(...)

...with ‘process’ and ‘manage’ being my favourites.

Weasel Word class and method names like this are an example of the ‘Functional Decomposition’ anti-pattern, which has the following cause: lack of programmer experience and or ineptitude. The programmers just didn’t understand Object Orientation and have written functions that just happen to be in classes. Note that If you read various books and articles on this pattern, they usually list additional reasons such as bad specifications or architecture, but in my experience, this one’s usually down to us, the programmers - full stop3

The solution to this problem is simply refactoring. Take a look at the Weasels, itemise the methods in those Utils classes, move them to there own meaningful classes, add JUnit tests (if the code is that bad then I’ll put money on there being no unit tests). Remember that there isn’t a magic wand for this situation, you have to take the long view, refactoring a little at a time (story by story if you’re in the Agile world), so as not to break the product.

The cowboys who wrote the project I looked at probably left town on the last stage a long time ago. They either learn by experience and improve or simply go on making mess after mess leaving people like you and me to clear up...


1 I first saw the term Weasel Words when coined by Scott Adams in his Dilbert cartoon. He used it to refer to management speak, but is equally applicable to Software development.

2 You’ll notice I used the word she here. I’m not being misogynistic, I just didn’t want to assume that all programmers are male, although in my experience the overwhelming majority are. Besides, it seems quite trendy to refer to programmers as ‘she’ in technical books these days.

3‘Full Stop’ = English for ‘period’.

 

From http://www.captaindebug.com/2011/09/weasel-words.html

Programmer (hardware) Anti-pattern IT Book Architecture Testing Clear (Unix)

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • 3 Main Pillars in ReactJS
  • Apache Kafka Is NOT Real Real-Time Data Streaming!
  • Build an Automated Testing Pipeline With GitLab CI/CD and Selenium Grid
  • Reliability Is Slowing You Down

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: