In designing software, I spend a lot of time deciding how the knowledge (algorithms / business logic) and data should be allocated between different entities; that is, which object should know what.

I am asking for advice about books, articles, presentations, classes, or other resources that would help me learn how to do it better. I code primarily in Python, but my question is not really language-specific; even if some of the insights I learn don't work in Python, that's fine.

I'll give a couple examples to clarify what I mean.

Example 1

I want to perform some computation. As a user, I will need to provide parameters to do the computation. I can have all those parameters sent to the "main" object, which then uses them to create other objects as needed. Or I can create one "main" object, as well as several additional objects; the additional objects would then be sent to the "main" object as parameters. What factors should I consider to make this choice?

Example 2

Let's say I have a few objects of type A that can perform a certain computation. The main computation often involves using an object of type B that performs some interim computation. I can either "teach" A instances what exact parameters to pass to B instances (i.e., make B "dumb"); or I can "teach" B instances to figure out what needs to be done when looking at an A instance (i.e., make B "smart"). What should I think about when I'm making this choice?