In computer science, the yo-yo problem is an Anti-pattern that occurs when a programmer has to read and understand a program whose inheritance graph is so long and complicated that the programmer has to keep flipping between many different class definitions in order to follow the control flow of the program. It often happens in object-oriented programming. The term comes from comparing the bouncing attention of the programmer to the up-down movement of a toy yo-yo.

Most practices of object-oriented programming recommend keeping the inheritance graph as shallow as possible, in part to avoid this problem. The use of object composition instead of inheritance (computer science) is also strongly preferred, although this still requires that a programmer keep multiple class definitions in mind at once.

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