Generally I use private methods to encapsulate functionality that is reused in multiple places in the class. But sometimes I have a large public method that could be broken up into smaller steps, each in its own private method. This would make the public method shorter, but I'm worried that forcing anyone who reads the method to jump around to different private methods will damage readability.

Is there a consensus on this? Is it better to have long public methods, or break them up into smaller pieces even if each piece is not reusable?

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    All answers are opinion based. Original authors always think their ravioli code is more readable; subsequent editors call it ravioli. – Frank Hileman Jun 5 '17 at 17:03
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    I suggest you read Clean Code. It recommends this style and has lots of examples. It also has a solution for the "jumping around" problem. – Kat Jun 5 '17 at 17:08
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    I think this depends on your team and what lines of code are contained. – HopefullyHelpful Jun 5 '17 at 18:02
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    Isn't the entire framework of STRUTS based off of single-use Getter/Setter methods, all of which are single-use methods? – Zibbobz Jun 5 '17 at 20:27

No, this is not a bad style. In fact it is a very good style.

Private functions need not exist simply because of reusability. That is certainly one good reason to create them, but there is another: decomposition.

Consider a function that does too much. It is a hundred lines long, and impossible to reason about.

If you split this function into smaller pieces, it still "does" as much work as before, but in smaller pieces. It calls other functions which should have descriptive names. The main function reads almost like a book: do A, then do B, then do C, etc. The functions it calls may only be called in one place, but now they are smaller. Any particular function is necessarily sandboxed from the other functions: they have different scopes.

When you decompose a large problem into smaller problems, even if those smaller problems (functions) are only used/solved once, you gain several benefits:

  • Readability. Nobody can read a monolithic function and understand what it does completely. You can either keep lying to yourself, or split it up into bite-sized chunks that make sense.

  • Locality of reference. It now becomes impossible to declare and use a variable, then have it stick around, and used again 100 lines later. These functions have different scopes.

  • Testing. While it is only necessary to unit test the public members of a class, it may be desirable to test certain private members as well. If there is a critical section of a long function that might benefit from testing, it is impossible to test it independently without extracting it to a separate function.

  • Modularity. Now that you have private functions, you may find one or more of them that could be extracted into a separate class, whether it is used only here or is reusable. To the previous point, this separate class is likely to be easier to test as well, since it will need a public interface.

The idea of splitting big code into smaller pieces that are easier to understand and test is a key point of Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. At the time of writing this answer the book is nine years old, but is just as relevant today as it was back then.

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    Don't forget maintaining consistent levels of abstraction and good names that ensure peeking inside the methods won't surprise you. Don't be surprised if an entire object is hiding in there. – candied_orange Jun 5 '17 at 15:43
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    Sometimes splitting methods can be good, but keeping things in-line can also have advantages as well. If a boundary check could sensibly done either inside or outside a block of code, for example, keeping that block of code in-line will make it easy to see whether the boundary check is being done once, more than once, or not at all. Pulling the block of code into its own subroutine would make such things more difficult to ascertain. – supercat Jun 5 '17 at 16:29
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    The "readability" bullet could be labelled "Abstraction". It's about abstraction. The "bite-sized chunks" do one thing, one low-level thing that you don't really care about the nitty-gritty details for when you're reading or stepping through the public method. By abstracting it to a function you get to step over it and keep focus on the big scheme of things / what the public method is doing at a higher level. – Mathieu Guindon Jun 5 '17 at 16:32
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    "Testing" bullet is questionable IMO. If your private members want to be tested, then they probably belong in their own class, as public members. Granted, first step to extracting a class/interface is to extract a method. – Mathieu Guindon Jun 5 '17 at 16:35
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    Splitting up a function purely by line numbers, code blocks and variable scope with no concern for the actual functionality is a terrible idea, and I'd argue the better alternative to that is just leaving it in one function. You should be splitting functions according to functionality. See DaveGauer's answer. You're somewhat hinting at this in your answer (with mentions of names and problems), but I can't help but feel like this aspect needs a whole lot more focus, given its importance and relevance in relation to the question. – Dukeling Jun 6 '17 at 12:52

It's probably a great idea!

I do take issue with splitting up long linear sequences of action into separate functions purely to reduce the average function length in your codebase:

function step1(){
  // ...
  step2(zarb, foo, biz);

function step2(zarb, foo, biz){
  // ...
  step3(zarb, foo, biz, gleep);

function step3(zarb, foo, biz, gleep){
  // ...

Now you've actually added lines of source and reduced total readability considerably. Especially if you're now passing lots of parameters between each function to keep track of state. Yikes!

However, if you've managed to extract one or more lines into a pure function that serves a single, clear purpose (even if called only once), then you've improved readability:

function foo(){
  f = getFrambulation();
  g = deglorbFramb(f);
  r = reglorbulate(g);

This likely won't be easy in real-world situations, but pieces of pure functionality can often be teased out if you think about it long enough.

You'll know you're on the right track when you have functions with nice verb names and when your parent function calls them and the whole thing practically reads like a paragraph of prose.

Then when you return weeks later to add more functionality and you find that you can actually re-use one of those functions, then oh, rapturous joy! What wondrous radiant delight!

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    I have heard this argument for many years, and it never plays out in the real world. I am speaking specifically of one or two line functions, called from only one place. While the original author always thinks it is "more readable", subsequent editors often call it ravioli code. This depends on the call depth, generally speaking. – Frank Hileman Jun 5 '17 at 17:00
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    @FrankHileman To be fair, I never saw any developer compliment the code of his or her antecessor. – T. Sar - Reinstate Monica Jun 5 '17 at 17:13
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    @TSar the previous developer is the source of all problems! – Frank Hileman Jun 6 '17 at 1:03
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    @TSar I've never even complimented the previous developer when I was the previous developer. – IllusiveBrian Jun 6 '17 at 13:48
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    The nice thing about decomposing is that you can then compose: foo = compose(reglorbulate, deglorbFramb, getFrambulation); ;) – Warbo Jun 6 '17 at 14:04

The answer is it highly depends on the situation. @Snowman covers the positives of breaking up large public function, but its important to remember there can be negative effects too, as you are rightly concerned about.

  • Lots of private functions with side-effects can make code difficult to read and quite fragile. This is especially true when these private functions depend upon the side effects of each other. Avoid having tightly-coupled functions.

  • Abstractions are leaky. While its nice to pretend how an operation is performed or how data is stored doesn't matter, there are cases where it does, and it's important to identify them.

  • Semantics and context matter. If you fail to clearly capture what a function does in its name, you again can reduce readability and increase fragility of the public function. This is especially true when you start creating private functions with large numbers of input and output parameters. And while from the public function, you see what private functions it calls, from the private function, you don't see what public functions call it. This can lead to a "bug-fix" in a private function that breaks the public function.

  • Heavily decomposed code is always clearer to the author than to others. This doesn't mean that it can't still be clear to others, but it's easy to say that it makes perfect sense that bar() must be called before foo() at the time of writing.

  • Dangerous re-use. Your public function likely restricted what input was possible to each private function. If these input assumptions are not properly captured (documenting ALL assumptions is hard), someone may improperly re-use one of your private functions, introducing bugs into the codebase.

Decompose functions based on their internal cohesion and coupling, not absolute length.

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    Ignore readability, let's look at the bug reporting aspect: if the user reports that a bug happened in MainMethod (easy enough to get, usually symbols are included and you should have a symbol dereference file) which is 2k lines (line numbers are never included in bug reports) and it's an NRE which can happen at 1k of those lines, well I'll be damned if I'm looking into that. But if they tell me it happened in SomeSubMethodA and it's 8 lines and the exception was an NRE, then I'll probably find and fix that easy enough. – 410_Gone Jun 6 '17 at 16:23

IMHO, the value of pulling out blocks of code purely as a means of breaking up complexity, would often be related to the difference in complexity between:

  1. A complete and accurate human-language description of what the code does, including how it handles corner cases, and

  2. The code itself.

If the code is a lot more complicated than the description, replacing the in-line code with a function call may make the surrounding code easier to understand. On the other hand, some concepts can be expressed more readably in a computer language than in human language. I would regard w=x+y+z;, for example, as more readable than w=addThreeNumbersAssumingSumOfFirstTwoDoesntOverflow(x,y,z);.

As a large function gets split up, there will be less and less difference there is between the complexity of sub-functions versus their descriptions, and the advantage of further subdivisions will decrease. If things are split up to the point that descriptions would be more complicated than code, further splits will make the code worse.

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    Your function name is misleading. There is nothing on the w=x+y+z that indicates any sort of overflow control, while the method name by itself seem to imply otherwise. A better name for your function would be "addAll(x,y,z)", for example, or even just "Sum(x,y,z)". – T. Sar - Reinstate Monica Jun 5 '17 at 17:11
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    Since were are talking about private methods, this question isn't possibly referring to C. Anyway, that's not my point - you could just call the same function "sum" without the need of tackling the assumption on the method signature. By your logic, any recursive method should be called "DoThisAssumingStackDoesntOverflow", for example. Same goes for "FindSubstringAssumingStartingPointIsInsideBounds". – T. Sar - Reinstate Monica Jun 5 '17 at 18:27
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    In other words, basic assumptions, whatever they may be (two numbers won't overflow, stack won't overflow, index was passed correctly) shouldn't be present on the method name. Those things should be documented, of course, if needed, but not on the method signature. – T. Sar - Reinstate Monica Jun 5 '17 at 18:29
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    @TSar: I was being a little facetious with the name, but the key point is that (switching to averaging because it's a better example) a programmer who sees "(x+y+z+1)/3" in context will be far better placed to know whether that is an appropriate way of computing the average given the calling code, than someone who is looking at either the definition or the call site of int average3(int n1, int n2, int n3). Splitting out the "average" function would mean that someone who wanted to see whether it was suitable for requirements would have to look in two places. – supercat Jun 5 '17 at 21:22
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    If we take C# for example, you would only have a single "Average" method, which can be made to accept any number of parameters. In fact, in c#, it works over any collection of numbers - and I'm sure it way easier to understand than tackling crude math into the code. – T. Sar - Reinstate Monica Jun 5 '17 at 22:48

It is a balancing challenge.

Finer is better

The private method effectively provides a name for the contained code, and sometimes a meaningful signature (unless half of its parameters are completely ad-hoc tramp data with unclear, undocumented interdependences).

Giving names to code constructs is generally good, as long as the names suggest a meaningful contract for the caller, and the contract of the private method accurately corresponds to what the name suggests.

By forcing oneself to think of meaningful contracts for smaller portions of the code, the initial developer can spot some bugs and avoid them painlessly even before any dev testing. This only works if the developer is striving for concise naming (simple sounding but accurate) and is willing to adapt the boundaries of the private method so that concise naming is even possible.

Subsequent maintenance is helped, too, because additional naming helps make the code self-documenting.

  • Contracts over small pieces of code
  • Higher level methods sometimes turn into a short sequence of calls, each of which does something significant and distinctly named - accompanied with the thin layer of general, outermost error handling. Such a method can become a valued training resource for anyone who has to quickly become an expert on the overall structure of the module.

Until it gets too fine

Is it possible to overdo giving names to small chunks of code, and end up with too many, too small private methods? Sure. One or more of the following symptoms indicate that the methods are getting too small to be useful:

  • Too many overloads that don't really represent alternative signatures for the same essential logic, but rather a single fixed call stack.
  • Synonyms used just to refer to the same concept repeatedly ("entertaining naming")
  • Lots of perfunctory naming decorations such as XxxInternal or DoXxx, especially if there's no unified scheme in introducing those.
  • Clumsy names almost longer than the implementation itself, like LogDiskSpaceConsumptionUnlessNoUpdateNeeded

Contrary to what the others have said, I would argue that a long public method is a design smell that is not rectified by decomposing into private methods.


If this is the case then I would argue each step should be its own first class citizen with a single responsibility each. In an object-oriented paradigm, I would suggest creating an interface and an implementation for each step in such a way that each has a single, easily-identifiable responsibility and can be named in a way that the responsiblity is clear. This allows you to unit-test the (formerly) large public method, as well as each individual step independently of each other. They should all be documented as well.

Why not decompose into private methods? Here are a few reasons:

  • Tight coupling and testability. By reducing your public method's size, you have improved its readability, but all the code is still tightly coupled together. You can unit test the individual private methods (using advanced features of a testing framework), but you cannot easily test the public method independently of the private methods. This goes against the principles of unit testing.
  • Class size and complexity. You've reduced the complexity of a method, but you've increased the complexity of the class. The public method is easier to read, but the class is now more difficult to read because it has more functions that define its behavior. My preference is for small single-responsibility classes, so a long method is a sign that the class is doing too much.
  • Cannot be reused easily. It's often the case that as a body of code matures reusability is useful. If your steps are in private methods, they cannot be reused anywhere else without first extracting them somehow. Additionally it may encourage copy-paste when a step is needed elsewhere.
  • Splitting in this way is likely to be arbitrary. I would argue that splitting a long public method doesn't take as much thought or design consideration as if you were to break up responsibilties into classes. Each class must be justified with a proper name, documentation, and tests, whereas a private method doesn't get as much consideration.
  • Hides the problem. So you've decided to split your public method into small private methods. Now there is no problem! You can keep adding more and more steps by adding more and more private methods! On the contrary, I think this is a major problem. It establishes a pattern for adding complexity to a class that will be followed by subsequent bug fixes and feature implementations. Soon your private methods will grow and they will have to be split.


This is an argument I've had with one of my colleagues recently. He argues that having the entire behavior of a module in the same file/method improves readability. I agree that the code is easier to follow when all together, but the code is less easy to reason about as complexity grows. As a system grows, it become intractable to reason about the entire module as a whole. When you decompose complex logic into several classes each with a single responsiblity, then it becomes much easier to reason about each part.

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    I would have to disagree. Too much or premature abstraction leads to unnecessarily complex code. A private method can be the first step in a path that could potentially need to be interfaced and abstracted, but your approach here suggests wandering around places that may never need visiting. – WillC Jun 8 '17 at 17:51
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    I understand where you're coming from, but I think code smells like the one OP is asking about are signs that it is ready for a better design. Premature abstraction would be designing these interfaces before you even run into that problem. – Samuel Jun 8 '17 at 19:48
  • I agree with this approach. In fact, when you follow TDD, it's the natural progression. The other person says it's too much premature abstraction, but I find it much easier to quickly mock a functionality I need in a separate class (behind an interface), than having to actually implement it in a private method in order for the test to pass. – Eternal21 Nov 17 '17 at 12:41

protected by gnat Jun 7 '17 at 5:47


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