What problems will I face if I remove the concept of interfaces from my code?

Question

I have been programming for many years but I am still not comfortable with the concept of "Interfaces". I try to use interfaces but many times I don't see a mandatory use for it. I think this is probably because the projects weren't so big, or because interfaces are more useful when teamwork is involved.

So, making another attempt to understand the importance of interfaces, here is my question:

What problems will I face if I remove the concept of interfaces from my code?

Answer 1

Removing interfaces from your code, whether they're done explicitly (e.g., Java's interface construct) or implicitly (e.g., a C++ abstract class), removes your ability to take advantage of some forms of inheritance. (I say "some forms" because in general terms, interfaces are equivalent to abstract classes but are treated differently by different languages.)

Take this example, written in no particular language:

class Juice { ... };  // Represents any kind of juice.

interface Fruit {
    Boolean is_edible();
    Juice   make_juice();
};

class Apple implements Fruit {
    Boolean is_edible() { return true; }
    Juice make_juice() { ... ; return juice; }
}

class Banana implements Fruit {
    Boolean is_edible() { return true; }
    Juice make_juice() { ... ; return juice; }
}


// Processes and accumulates the juices of many fruits.
class Juicer {
    Vector<Juice> accumulated_juice;  // Where all the juice goes

    // Process a Fruit for consumption.  Complain if it's
    // not an edible fruit.
    Void process(Fruit f) {
      if ( ! f.is_edible() ) throw_exception;
      accumulated_juice.add(f.make_juice());
    }
}

This is pretty straightforward. The Juicer can process() any Fruit you hand it because the interface guarantees that:

• There's an is_edible() method determine if the Fruit is edible
• There's a make_juice() method to produce the juice

You can develop a Kumquat or a Mango or a StarFruit and you'll never have to modify the Juicer to understand them. Juice is juice.

If you remove interfaces, all of that simplicity goes away:

// Assume same class declarations as above without "implements xxx" clause.

class Juicer {
    Vector<Juice> accumulated_juice;  // Where all the juice goes

    // Process a Fruit for consumption.  Complain if it's
    // not an edible fruit.
    Void process_apple(Apple a) {
        if ( ! a.is_edible() ) throw_exception;
        accumulated_juice.add(a.make_juice());
    }
    Void process_banana(Banana b) {
        if ( ! b.is_edible() ) throw_exception;
        accumulated_juice.add(b.make_juice());
    }
    // Add methods for additional fruits here.
}

All of the process_xxx() methods are identical except for what type they take as an argument. Even though Apple and Banana have methods called is_edible() and make_juice() with identical signatures, the language won't just let you call them by name because they're part of different classes. This means your Juicer has to have more code added every time you develop a new fruit.

Once this grows to more than these few classes, it becomes a maintenance nightmare if you need to make changes to how the process() method works internally. Further, any other code that handles your fruits has to have all of this additional code

HTH.

Answer 2

I was in the same boat as you for the first couple of years of my programming career. I managed to get on fine without creating my own interfaces. You cant really remove the concept entirely however as using most libraries will involve consuming interfaces.

I would strongly recommend spending the time to research what they are and some basic use cases. You will miss out on a lot of powerful tools such as dependency injection if you don't learn how to use them. It will also make your code more decoupled and simpler to change if you rely on interfaces rather than concrete types.

Answer 3

What problems will I face if I remove the concept of interfaces from my code?

What you will get is the tight coupling of your system. As the saying goes "In pursuit of code quality: Beware the tight couple!"

What is tight coupled software system?

You probably have at least heard the term coupling used in the context of object-oriented programming. Coupling refers to the interrelationship(s) of components (or objects) in an application. A loosely coupled application is more modularized than a tightly coupled one. Its components rely on interfaces and abstract classes as opposed to concrete ones, as they would in a tightly coupled system. In a loosely coupled system, components are interrelated using abstractions instead of implementations.

A common schema of tightly coupled software system (GUI and DB without abstraction layer in between)

The GUI's dependence on an implementation rather than an abstraction limits the system. You cannot operate the GUI without having the database up and running. This design doesn't seem so bad from a functional standpoint -- we've been writing apps like this for years and planes aren't falling out of the sky, after all -- but testing it is another story.

OK, how to tight coupling? - will Interfaces do the trick? - Turn the coupling to be loose!

The GUI in above software system relies on an abstraction - a data access object or DAO. The DAO's implementation is directly dependent on the database, but the GUI itself is not entangled. Adding an abstraction in the form of a DAO decouples the database implementation from the GUI implementation. In place of the database, an interface is now coupled to the GUI code.

In conclusion - One thing developers have come to agree on is that well-written code is maintainable, and the Dependency Inversion Principle is a sure way to design for maintainability. Dependency inversion stresses reliance on abstractions over implementations, which creates a great deal of flexibility within a code base. Applying this technique with the help of a DAO, ensures that not only will you be able to modify your code base when you need to, but so will other developers.

Answer 4

If you're not seeing a need for interfaces, then they may not be necessary. I would say, don't create an interface until you have a good reason to do so. (This goes under the principal of every character of your code having a purpose.)

I've done a lot of work in the Java world. Interfaces are all over. There are several reasons for these interfaces including

• Some libraries requires interfaces e.g. if you want to create a dynamic proxy, you have to use interfaces to define types
• Implementation hiding - this is the classic reason
• "Because we may need it later" - not necessary and maybe a waste of developer time
• "Because somebody told me that I should create interfaces" - not a good reason

Answer 5

An interface is very useful to hide implementation details. E.g. there might be a logging-class. It is not necessary to know how the logging is managed, the log messages may saved in a text file or in a database. All logging-implementations might implement this interace:

public interface Logging {
void log(String message, int level)
}

If you use the interface (and get the implementation via a fabric or dependency injection) you don't depend on a certain implementation, which might change over time. And you are available to change the implementation without any changes in the code.

Answer 6

If you don't understand what interfaces offer then you don't understand interfaces. So you probably won't loose much if you stop using them because it is apparent you don't use them to their fullest potential.

The three major things I would miss would be

1. Multiple inheritance. If I inherit from a base class in a framework to get the plumbing benefits how does the class easily tell the world it can do x? Interfaces.
2. Related to #1 is that I can define the behavior of the application in a component that has no dependency on anything. You can do this with abstract classes to a point but you can run into problems pretty quick if you work with third parties, other divisions or even legacy code.
3. Those two things make testing new classes that rely on interfaces so much easier.

If you don't understand those three benefits (and there are others) then you either work with a language that allows true multiple inheritance and accept the problems that introduces, use scripting languages that are much more flexible or you simply do not understand what interfaces represent.

Answer 7

Short answer: As result, your classes will have both unhealthy high headcount and very high method count. (look at early UI libraries, they are loaded with classes with, say 100 methods - ugly)

Interfaces are nice compact (usually 0-5 methods) purely abstract classes. They are easy to inherit by any class in any place, in hierarchies of any size. The sole purpose of interfaces is multiple inheritance, but without evil parts of multiple inherictance. Interfaces naturally bring good compression to badly bloated piles of classes.

Removing interfaces will disallow multiple inheritance from purely abstract classes. The remaining classes, instead of being multirooted shallow and compact hive, will form forest of trees of inheritances. Over time, with refactorings, forest will tend to collapse to single super tree with root "Object" class. The tree will be no more pretty. It will have lengthy root with many unnecessary abstract classes close to root and wide crown of nearly identical leaf classes, where it is hard to tell one class from another. Simple functions introduced at root classes will have too much of impact on everything and make the code unmaintainable, unlearnable, overfunctional and useless. Every special treatment of common methods will require specialization tricks, like "reintroduce".

There will be unnecessary visibility for overly public methods. Lot of dead methods, which are needed to stay near root classes, but making no sense for most of leaf classes. At some point the pile will reach the size, complexity and amount of inner conflicts, when there will be no more possible to bring change, fix or improvement without breaking something somewhere.