A programming pattern to initialize complex objects sequentially

What is it about?

Initializing complex objects in programming is a tedious, error-prone and often ambigous task that requires a high cognitive load and/or looking at the documentation frequently. The Sequential Initializer Pattern makes this process simple and error-free. We achieve this by enforcing a series of function calls which are responsible for initialization of the semantically different parts of the complex object. This improves both readability and writeability of code and reduces the cognitive load of the programmer as well as the documentation lookups.

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Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

Why is it important?

There are many errors a programmer can make when initializing a complex object with many parameters. A wrong number of parameters could be passed, false default values could potentially be set, parameters can be mixed up, or it does not become clear to the programmer which parameter is for what without looking at the documentation and many more. The same happens when reading code where a complex object gets initialized. What do the parameters stand for? Was a default value used somewhere? All this becomes clear and unambiguous using the Sequential Initializer pattern and modern IDEs support the pattern naturally resulting in a smooth workflow.

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