Ravioli code - why an anti-pattern? [closed]

Question

I recently came across a term 'God object' which was described as an 'anti-pattern'. I'd heard of bad coding practices, but I'd never heard them described thus.

So I headed off to Wikipedia to find out more, and I found that there is an anti-pattern called 'Ravioli code' which is described as being "characterized by a number of small and (ideally) loosely-coupled software components."

I'm puzzled - why is this a bad thing?

Answer 1

Spaghhetti:

Spaghetti code is a pejorative term for source code

Ravioli:

Ravioli code is a type of computer program structure, characterized by a number of small and (ideally) loosely-coupled software components. The term is in comparison with spaghetti code, comparing program structure to pasta;

It's comparing them. It isn't saying it's an anti-pattern.

But I agree. The article is confusing. The problem is not with ravioli analogy but with the wikipedia article structure itself. It starts calling Spaghetti as a bad practice, then says some examples and after that say something about Ravioli code.

EDIT: They improved the article. Is an anti-pattern because

While generally desirable from a coupling and cohesion perspective, overzealous separation and encapsulation of code can bloat call stacks and make navigation through the code for maintenance purposes more difficult.

Answer 2

I'd say it's pretty obvious Ravioli code and Lasagna code are both pejorative terms - being intentionally placed alongside their fellow pasta simile 'spaghetti code' - and both terms describe real world anti-patterns. Some code is very time-consuming to maintain and very prone to failure simply because it is broken down into so many separate sub-processes - that is ravioli code. Some code has so many layers of abstraction that it becomes very difficult to implement a change to it and/or understand at what level a failure is occurring - that is lasagna code. The only practical way to make a change to lasagna code is often to simply bypass the layers and write the straightforward code that does the job. I have to maintain some ravioli code, but in general such code suffers from its convolution and fails to find widespread use, so there are few examples of it that we would all be familiar with. By contrast, lasagna code is everywhere at the moment. I like to think I don't write any pasta code myself, but you can at least follow a string of spaghetti...