Aren't Information Expert & Tell Don't Ask at odds with Single Responsibility Principle?

Question

Information-Expert, Tell-Don\'t-Ask, and SRP are often mentioned together as best practices. But I think they are at odds. Here is what I\'m talki

Answer 1

I don't think that they are so much at odds as they are emphasizing different things that will cause you pain. One is about structuring code to make it clear where particular responsibilities are and reducing coupling, the other is about reducing the reasons to modify a class.

We all have to make decisions each and every day about how to structure code and what dependencies we are willing to introduce into designs.

We have built up a lot of useful guidelines, maxims and patterns that can help us to make the decisions.

Each of these is useful to detect different kinds of problems that could be present in our designs. For any specific problem that you may be looking at there will be a sweet spot somewhere.

The different guidelines do contradict each other. Just applying every piece of guidance you have heard or read will not make your design better.

For the specific problem you are looking at today you need to decide what the most important factors that are likely to cause you pain are.