As a Java engineer in the web development industry for several years now, having heard multiple times that X is good because of SOLID principles or Y is bad because it breaks SOLID principles, and having to memorize the “good” ways to do everything before an interview etc, I find it harder and harder to do when I really start to dive into the real reason I’m doing something in a particular way.
One example is creating an interface for every goddamn class I make because of “loose coupling” when in reality none of these classes are ever going to have an alternative implementation.
Also the more I get into languages like Rust, the more these doubts are increasing and leading me to believe that most of it is just dogma that has gone far beyond its initial motivations and goals and is now just a mindless OOP circlejerk.
There are definitely occasions when these principles do make sense, especially in an OOP environment, and they can also make some design patterns really satisfying and easy.
What are your opinions on this?
My somewhat hot take is that design patterns and SOLID are just tools created to overcome the shortcomings of bad OOP languages.
When I use Rust, I don’t really think about design patterns or SOLID or anything like that. Sure, Rust has certain idiomatic patterns that are common in the ecosystem. But most of these patterns are very Rust-specific and come down to syntax rather than semantics. For instance the builder pattern, which is tbh also another tool to overcome one of Rust’s shortcomings (inability to create big structs easily and flexibly).
I think you’re completely correct that these things are dogma (or “circlejerking” if you prefer that term). Just be flexible and open minded in how you approach problems and try to go for the simplest solution that works. KISS and YAGNI are honestly much better principles to go by than SOLID or OOP design patterns.