Action at a Distance

Kind: anti-pattern

Layer: Enforcement Core

Record: architecture:action-at-a-distance

Severity: discouraged

Scope: event_messaging

Formed by: Let one part of the system change behavior far away through globals, monkey patches, shared registries, ambient context, or implicit event listeners.

Canonical: Ontology

A defect in which one part of the system changes behavior elsewhere through globals, patches or implicit listeners.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Hidden Side Effect and before Ambient Context.

Refactored by

• Explicit Dependency
• Localize Effect
• Causation Tracing
• Restrict Global Mutation

Severity

• discouraged

Category

• Anti-patterns

Force

• Event messaging

Negated by

• Controlled Side Effects

Linked from

• Seven controls, seven classes
• Anti-patterns
• Transactions / State / Concurrency
• Core Modular Design
• Observability / Auditability / Traceability
• Severity levels
• The forces