Article Review: FizzBuzz Refactoring Challenge with Open/Closed Principle
In this week’s episode of TTD, we have Oliver Mensah reviewing an article he posted on Dev.to a couple of months ago. The article was about FizzBuzz Refactoring Challenge with the Open/Closed Principle. Oliver explored instances where you are required to add more conditions to the “fizzbuzz” rule and how to meet such requirements using the Open/Closed Principle.
Fizz buzz is a group word game for children to teach them about division. Players take turns to count incrementally, replacing any number divisible by three with the word “fizz”, and any number divisible by five with the word “buzz”.
It is a simple but important programming task, used in software developer job interviews, to determine whether the candidate can actually write code. Software development is not always about writing code. The essence is always to solve a problem. Writing code is just one of many tools used to achieve a bigger goal. Most employers regard success in “fizzbuzz” problem as a quick way for developers to make a great impression thereby keeping them in the interview process.
…this simple exercise is still a quick way to get a first impression.
_Daniel Bunte: Why I’m still using “Fizz Buzz” to hire Software-Developers
The concept and interpretation of the “fizzbuzz”
Write a program that prints numbers from 1 to 100. If a number is a multiple of 3, print “Fizz” instead of the number, and if it’s a multiple of 5, print “Buzz”. For numbers that are multiples of both 3 and 5, print “FizzBuzz”.
The flow chart below should help
Concept and interpretation of Open/Closed Principle
The OCP states that you should be able to extend a class behavior without modifying it. Meaning, a unit of code can be considered open for an extension when its behavior can be easily changed without modifying it. The fact that no actual modification is needed to change the behavior of a unit of code makes it “closed” for modification.
“In the FizzBuzz code shown previously, the FizzBuzz class should be able to add more requirements with minimal or no changes to the codebase. To do this, we need to be able to identify what is happening in each condition that determines a strategy and remove what’s common into a specific abstraction such as interface, abstract class, and class.”
Here’s Oliver’s video, where he talked extensively about the Open/Closed Principle.
Further Reading
Check Oliver’s earlier post on Dev.to.
And here’s a GitHub repo on the code examples.
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