Remove Subclass

Goal

A subclass whose only purpose was to encode a type code or add nothing collapses back into a field on the parent.

Before the refactoring

class Person {}
class Female extends Person {}
class Male   extends Person {}

After the refactoring

class Person {
  constructor(gender) { this.gender = gender; }
}

Savings

Smaller hierarchy; new variants are field values instead of new files; the parent regains its variability point as data.

Note

Removing a subclass referenced by name elsewhere (factories, registries) breaks those references — confirm no consumer is type-testing the subclass.