Code Smell 49 - Caches
I’m a senior software engineer loving clean code, and declarative designs. S.O.L.I.D. and agile methodologies fan.
Caches are sexy. They are a one-night stand. We need to avoid them in a long-term relationship.
TL;DR: Any junior student can create a cache. Almost no senior developer can debug and invalidate them.
Problems
Coupling
Testability
Cache invalidation.
Maintainability
Premature Optimization
Erratic Behavior
Lack of transparency
Non-Deterministic behavior
Solutions
If you have a conclusive benchmark and are willing to pay for some coupling: Put an object in the middle.
Unit test all your invalidation scenarios. Experience shows we face them in an incremental way.
Look for a real world cache metaphor and model it.
Sample Code
Wrong
Right
Detection
This is a design smell.
It will be difficult to enforce by policy.
Tags
- Premature Optimization
Conclusion
Caches should be functional and intelligent
In this way we can manage invalidation.
General purpose caches are suitable only for low level objects like operating systems, files and streams.
We shouldn't cache domain objects.
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Credits
Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
Phil Karlton
This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.
