Type generalization
In today's article we are going to delve into the fascinating world of Type generalization. Whatever your interest or prior knowledge on this topic, we are sure that you will find new and relevant information that will enrich your understanding. From its origins to its relevance today, we will explore all the important aspects and provide you with interesting facts and facts that will encourage you to continue learning and discovering more about Type generalization. Get ready to immerse yourself in an exciting and enriching journey!
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (March 2024) |
Type generalization is a technique commonly used in refactoring. The idea is to draw on the benefits of object-orientation and make more-generalized types, thus enabling more code sharing, leading to better maintainability as there is less code to write. Too-general code can, however, become completely useless, leading to spaghetti code doing effectively nothing.
Type generalization refers to making more general or more abstract some subset of the traits of a specific type. A superclass has wider use than a specific subclass, and so is more 'general'.
An example of generalizing a type would be moving a method from a child to a parent class for common use by all the parent class' children, not just the original child.
Another example, in the Java programming language, would be access to an object via an interface which isn't tied into a specific implementation of that interface.[1]
References
- ^ Fowler, Martin (1999). Refactoring. Addison Wesley. p. 336. ISBN 0201485672.
 | This software-engineering-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |