> I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it.
Over-engineering is a common cause: simple solutions can be deceitfully difficult to find. That being said, additional indirection layers are usually justified by the overall architecture, and — assuming they're reasonable — can't always be appreciated locally.
« I'm always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who'd have guessed sophistication bought such noise? » (Dick Gabriel)
Had a math teach full of pithy, paradoxical, sardonic and witty quotes. Told us that if we only take away one from his class is that you can never go wrong attributing an unknown quote to Mark Twain or Benjamin Franklin.
Over-engineering is a common cause: simple solutions can be deceitfully difficult to find. That being said, additional indirection layers are usually justified by the overall architecture, and — assuming they're reasonable — can't always be appreciated locally.