Anti-pattern

An anti-pattern is a pattern that may look at first like a good idea — or at least a reasonable one — but which proves, on balance, to be a bad idea in most circumstances due to its consequences and side-effects.

The concept was introduced by Andrew Koenig in 1995 and popularized by the 1998 book "AntiPatterns" by Brown, Malveau, McCormick, and Mowbray.

The term is modeled on the idea of design patterns from software engineering. Just as a pattern describes a reusable solution to a common problem, an anti-pattern describes a reusable mistake — a response to a recurring problem that seems intuitive or expedient but tends to cause more trouble than it solves.

Anti-patterns appear at every level of software development, from low-level coding habits to high-level architectural and organizational decisions. Well-known examples include the God Object, in which a single class accumulates too much responsibility; Cargo Culting, where practices are adopted without understanding their purpose; and Analysis Paralysis, where a team becomes so absorbed in planning that progress stalls.