Premature Abstraction

Kind: anti-pattern

Layer: Enforcement Core

Record: architecture:premature-abstraction

Severity: discouraged

Scope: modularity

Formed by: Extract a shared abstraction before variation is understood, causing the abstraction to fit no use case well.

Canonical: Ontology

A defect in which a shared abstraction is extracted before its variation is understood, so it fits no caller well.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Speculative Generality and before Over-Abstraction.

Contracts

• Pattern Distiller Kernel

Refactored by

• Duplicate Until the Pattern Stabilizes
• Split Abstraction
• Defer Generalization

Severity

• discouraged

Category

• Anti-patterns

Force

• Modularity

Negated by

• Evolutionary Architecture

Linked from

• Core templates
• The structural domain
• Anti-patterns
• Architecture Review / Evolution / Governance Artifacts
• Architecture Review Evolution Governance
• Core Modular Design
• Pattern distillation
• Severity levels
• The forces