Divergent Change §

Divergent Change

Divergent Change resembles Shotgun Surgery but is actually the opposite smell. Divergent Change is when many changes are made to a single class. Shotgun Surgery refers to when a single change is made to multiple classes simultaneously.

### Reasons for the Problem Often these divergent modifications are due to poor program structure or "copypasta programming".

Treatment §

• Split up the behavior of the class via Extract Class.
• If different classes have the same behavior, you may want to combine the classes through inheritance (Extract Superclass and Extract Subclass).

### Payoff - Improves code organization. - Reduces code duplication. - Simplifies support.