Ravioli code - why an anti-pattern?

anti-patterns
Tola Odejayi picture Tola Odejayi · Jan 12, 2010 · Viewed 14.6k times · Source

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

GmonC picture GmonC · Jan 12, 2010

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.

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