Objects Are People, Too
Determining what state or behaviors to expose on an object can be difficult. We all know the basic rules—encapsulate logic, only expose immutable value objects, and so on—but putting those rules into practice does not come naturally. In fact, given our heritage of anemic, relational models, it’s almost unnatural . Several years ago I remember reading about SOLID and other OOP principles and thinking to myself, how on earth would you persist that? Of course not all objects are persistent, and having the benefit of experience I now know that the view, domain, and persistence models need not be one and the same. That being the case, there are incredible benefits to encapsulation, if done properly. But how exactly does one put aside relational habits? One trick I have is to imagine objects have personalities and imagine how they would react if I asked certain questions or requested certain behaviors. For example, suppose I had a Person object and I w...