Dr Seuss on Constructors

Dave Bush
2 min readJul 23, 2023

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Sam climbing Skill Hill in Bugville
Sam Climbing Skill Hill of Bugville

In the vibrant town of Bugville, known for its thrill,
There lived a brisk coder named Sam, climbing up a skill hill.
One day, he embarked on a project so grand,
To craft an entity, a creature named ClutterSand.

With properties and methods, the ClutterSand was vast,
It needed a constructor, to echo its past.
A special function, Sam knew it true,
It’s called when an instance, of the class, is brand new.

Sam, though clever, was fond of a trick,
“Why not let the constructor perform more?”, he picked.
Logics, computations, actions so raw,
In his constructor, he saw no flaw.

His constructor, now bloated, did more than just spawn,
It fetched data, it computed, from dusk to dawn.
And as the ClutterSand grew, he felt a tad smug,
Ignoring a rising tide, under his proverbial rug.

Inheritance and Polymorphism started to frown,
Base class antics caused the subclasses to drown.
Overridden properties, methods once lean,
Now gave unpredictable results, the scene turned mean.

Guaranteed object initialization, once a steady rock,
Now seemed more like an elusive flock.
Objects weren’t always ready when constructors were through,
Leaving Sam puzzled, with a clue or two.

Then came the exceptions, with nowhere to hide,
Complex tasks in constructor, made them collide.
Who’d handle these exceptions? Sam started to wonder,
As his codebase threatened to split asunder.

Unit tests, Sam’s supposed trustworthy aid,
Became a nightmare, a never-ending raid.
With complex constructors, tests were a mess,
Frustration peaked, causing undue stress.

Transparency, predictability, pillars of good code,
Began to wobble under the constructor’s load.
Debugging was like chasing shadows in the night,
Sam’s hasty decision didn’t seem so right.

Days turned into nights, bug reports piled high,
Sam’s grand project was now but a sigh.
A lesson learned, a principle reborn,
A simple constructor, complex tasks must scorn.

For constructors should be modest, diligent, and pure,
To make the objects ready, stable, and sure.
And for extra logic, another way must be sought,
So, dear coder, let this lesson not be for naught.

Remember the tale of Sam and his ClutterSand,
In the world of code, let simplicity command.
Though the road was rough, and the journey was cruel,
In the end, Sam learned the golden rule!

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Dave Bush
Dave Bush

Written by Dave Bush

Dave Bush is an Agile/Scrum/Extreme Architect and Programmer who is currently focused on the world of Angular.