OOP is not dead: Elegant Objects

Recently I have observed a growing wave of what I describe as kind of anti-design movement. Experienced people find out they have been doing it wrong. One say: TDD is dead, other: we do not need interfaces. Script kiddies Dynamic language programmers claim strongly typed languages are broken. It comes even to a very last discovery that short methods are pure evil!
I've just spoken to a programmer, who had nearly 20 years of experience with Java, yet trying to convince me that interfaces are useless, just because for that long time he had never written an alternative implementation of method. In same conversation however, he praised ORMs for possibility of painless exchanging of DB engine!
The leitmotiv of this new heresy is that we can easily cut off the effort introduced by OOP, design patterns, TDD, DDD or any other, until now considered a good practice and focus on delivering just what matters - the `business value` itself. So that we can successfully bill the client and go to the next project. This sounds good. That may make sense. If your project is not going to be maintained for years, please feel free to skip paradigms. Use spaghetti architecture. Use mixed javascript, php, perl and have fun with testing on production. Building a prototype is a kind of development. Write once and dispose the code soon. But in project that is planned for more than three months this approach is just as wrong like murdering your client with an axe and taking their money. Just like Vikings did.

It is all about maintainability. If you use dynamic typing but do not cover your app with test, expect your work will get broken by colleagues siting next to you and following your discipline. If you do not use interfaces - I expect I know already how your tests look like. Like `null`. If you prefer not to extract method I know how lightweight your code is. I have seen java class source code that had over 1 megabyte! Imagine how fast you can deliver business value in such a project. If you think design is a waste - yeah... I was there, I have seen important application presenting different results on each subpage, thanks to `if` pyramid of doom, copied, pasted and happily living its own life. It does cost. Believe me. Technical debt is not something that will disappear by just forgetting the matter.

Elegant Objects by Yegor Bugayenko gives you some kind of framework. By following author's 23 pieces of advice you can learn how to use Object Oriented Paradigm in real language like Java. Yegor conducts personalized object (Mr. Object) through journey of life. The very similar way as we personalize actors using eg. Akka and follow some important rules - not forced by language itself. This concept seems to be core of author's approach to improve maintainability of software we create. When we interact with a person, we stick to some polite way of communication, assuming we are not talking to an idiot. Same holds for our objects.

There are some other helpful tricks and lot of strong opinions on using some code constructs and patterns/antipatterns. The book gives number of easy to remember code examples. Explains or recall you why constructor injection is the only right way and why `static` is not welcomed (even if we do now FP in Java). If you are more interested in the content of the book - I can recommend Tomek's review and page of Yegor Bugayenko.

Some of author's rules I think may be a bit controversial and exaggerated - at least in context of my last project. The only point I really didn't like was actually Yegor's approach to C++, a bit unfair as this language can be as object oriented as Java is.

I am not imposing that there is only one way to create maintainable software. Whether you will use header files to separate contract from implementation or will you use java interfaces or maybe free monads that define program separated from its interpretation. It is up to you. But please, take some set of rules, and keep to them in consistent manner. That is what your client pays you for.