Design begins with particular cases: in them, action is closer to the meaning of the actual task. Generalization arises after working with the concrete, when a common foundation is discovered among solutions already found.
The Particular Case as a Starting Point
First, a concrete action must be performed in response to an actual task. Universalization “just in case” replaces that task with an assumed multitude of future cases.
Early universalization becomes a Tower of Babel: the construction grows before it has been established what exactly it is supposed to bring together.
What should be compared are particular solutions that already work. Generalization is justified when something genuinely common has been discovered: the same life cycle, the same responsibility, the same constraints.
The Cost of Premature Universalization
Premature universalization:
- blurs causality;
- conceals responsibility;
- turns architecture into a mechanism without a subject;
- creates fragile layers of abstraction and makes the system more complicated.
A particular solution ceases to be an action directed toward a definite task and becomes a special case of a construction whose common foundation has not yet been established.
Mature Generalization
Mature universalization appears after practice. It condenses a structure already discovered and preserves the connection to the actual meaning of actions.
The working sequence is:
- Carry out two or more particular solutions.
- Compare their foundations and constraints.
- Extract what is demonstrably common.
The foundation is an established correspondence in how the solutions operate, not an assumption that they might turn out to be similar.
