anti-patterns

name	anti-patterns
description	Common software anti-patterns, code smells, and how to avoid them
license	MIT
compatibility	opencode
metadata	{"audience":"developers","category":"software-development"}

What I do

• Identify code anti-patterns in existing code
• Suggest refactoring solutions
• Avoid common mistakes in design and implementation
• Improve code quality and maintainability
• Recognize technical debt indicators

When to use me

When reviewing code, improving designs, or fixing maintainability issues.

Code Anti-Patterns

Object-Oriented

• God Object: Single class doing too much
• Spaghetti Code: Unstructured, tangled control flow
• Magic Numbers: Hard-coded values without constants
• Feature Envy: Excessive use of another class's data
• Data Clumps: Groups of variables passed together
• Refused Bequest: Not using inherited methods
• Switch Statements: Complex conditionals instead of polymorphism
• Parallel Inheritance: Duplicate class hierarchies

Design Anti-Patterns

• Singleton Abuse: Overuse of singletons
• Dependency Hell: Complex dependency chains
• Circular Dependencies: A→B→C→A
• Interface Bloat: Overly complex interfaces
• Leaky Abstractions: Exposing internal details
• Golden Hammer: Using one solution for everything
• Reinvention: Not using built-in features
• Analysis Paralysis: Over-planning

Database Anti-Patterns

• Database as IPC: Using DB for communication
• God Table: One table for everything
• EAV: Entity-Attribute-Value pattern
• Naive Enum: Storing enums as strings without constraints
• Missing Indexes: Slow queries due to full table scans
• N+1 Queries: Loading related data inefficiently

Concurrency

• Race Conditions: Uncoordinated concurrent access
• Deadlock: Circular wait dependencies
• Blocking Operations: Synchronous calls in async code
• Shared Mutex: Global locks causing contention

Testing

• Testing the Implementation: Instead of behavior
• Happy Path Only: Only testing success cases
• Manual Testing: No automated tests
• Tight Coupling: Tests depend on implementation details

Code Smells

• Long methods
• Large classes
• Duplicate code
• Long parameter lists
• Primitive obsession
• Data classes
• Comments explaining bad code

Refactoring Strategies

• Extract Method
• Move Method
• Replace Conditional with Polymorphism
• Introduce Parameter Object
• Replace Magic Numbers
• Extract Class
• Inline Class
• Introduce Null Object