>... By applying rules described in the post you are just pushing the problem around. At some point, somehow, a decision must be made which branch to follow. R

>... By applying rules described in the post you are just pushing the problem around. At some point, somehow, a decision must be made which branch to follow. Right, and you should try and make that decision as early and as few times as possible. For example, let's say you work with older systems that have grown. You went from one type of config to two types, so now you have If (configOne) ... else ... scattered all over your code. You can't really get rid of the decision, it has to be made, but you can refactor the code to make the decision only once when the app starts up.