Dragan Stepanović - Should we be having this problem in the first place?

Being expressive about the domain doesn’t only improve readability, but also reduces coupling, which in turn enables incremental refactoring.

So, expressive domain -> reduces coupling -> enables incremental refactoring.

To quote Brian Marick: “An example would be handy right about now”.

A snippet from Game of Life kata:

3 methods have the same body, but that single line of code is used to communicate 3 different outcomes and meaning in a given (client) context.

As a bonus effect of being explicit about that, it enabled independent changeability of the methods and thus ability to refactor in small steps. And believe it or not I did have a need to change them independently while refactoring (e.g. from static to non-static).

Had I used just the single, implicit, response (that single line of code) in all contexts, I wouldn’t be able to change the method without affecting all of the clients, plus would leave out bunch of domain knowledge and meaning.