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Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

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Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#21

Post by solipsism »

clusmore wrote: post #16
solipsism wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your coding style not involved lining function arguments (and other things) that are broken into two lines up vertically? Converting between 8 spaces and 4 would screw this up.

My preferred whitespace code-style is to use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment. Under no circumstances should two consecutive lines be aligning something (with spaces) and have different levels of indentation (with tabs), I can't imagine why you would ever need to do this, so this has never been an issue for me.

My preferred whitespace code-style is to use tabs for indentation

What does "I convert it back to 4 space tabs before I commit anything" mean, then? If you're putting \t tabs in your file, 4 space tabs vs 8 space tabs refers to the way your editor renders \t. What are you changing before committing, your editor settings?

Edit: oops, just realized you're not the person I was responding to. The convert it back before I commit anything comment suggests he/she is using spaces. Or is very confused.

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#22

Post by tempestn »

Not being used to C syntax, I took this as a typo at first:

    indirect = &(*indirect)->next;
The position of the parentheses make it look like you're dereferencing only (* indirect). But on second look, you need the parens there so that it's (* indirect)->next as opposed to indirect->next. Then the & operates on the whole thing. I'd be tempted to wrap it in a second set of parens for clarity, but perhaps it's entirely obvious to a programmer who's actually used to using pointers. IE:

    indirect = &((*indirect)->next);

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#23

Post by johan_larson »

For my money, Linus's example of "good taste" gives up rather a lot of clarity to achieve succinctness. The original is simple and clear. His preferred version is shorter, but also harder to understand because of its use of a complicated indirection. And that's not good taste. It's just showing off.

“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” ― Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#24

Post by dsymonds »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #8

These are great examples, and they hint to, but do not mention, the big counterpoint: development time. In his own examples, the author admitted that though the code was ugly, it worked. He then spent extra time reworking the existing code to make it, well, prettier. "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." -- Voltaire The problem is that, in many (most?) professional settings, the developer is un…

Apart from trivial or throwaway projects, code is read many more times than it is written. Spending time reworking some code to make it easier to read will pay off over the long term.

(There's the question of whether making code more compact but more "clever" truly makes it easier to read, but that's a separate point.)

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#25

Post by crdoconnor »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #8

These are great examples, and they hint to, but do not mention, the big counterpoint: development time. In his own examples, the author admitted that though the code was ugly, it worked. He then spent extra time reworking the existing code to make it, well, prettier. "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." -- Voltaire The problem is that, in many (most?) professional settings, the developer is un…

>Some projects, I daresay mostly open-source projects, can afford to be detached from the pressure of deadlines that corporations require

That's partly why open source has staying power and so many corporate projects get junked.

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#26

Post by elouataoui »

no_protocol wrote: post #12

> it only performed 256 loop iterations, one for each point along the edge alarm bells There are only 252 points along the edge. This code will act on each corner twice. If you were performing an operation like `+= 1` on each edge element, this code would be wrong. When you copy and paste it later and change all the `= 0` to something else, you might end up with an unfortunate surprise. Once I saw this mistake in the…

The way I'd do it if I didn't want to use ifs is to loop n times, and for each row fill the first cell and the last one. So now I have the left and right side at O(n). Then i'd loop n-1 times starting at the second column and for each column fill the first and last cell again. O(n) all in all without repeating yourself, and no tests.

Another way to look at this problem altogether would be to change the data structure, so instead of using a classical 2d array the problem becomes trivial if you use a spiral array. Filling the edge in this case is just a matter of filling the first 4*(n-1) cells. Obviously this solution's acceptability depends entirely on what you're gonna do with your data afterwards.

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#27

Post by clusmore »

solipsism wrote: post #21
clusmore wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preferred whitespace code-style is to use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment. Under no circumstances should two consecutive lines be aligning something (with spaces) and have different levels of indentation (with tabs), I can't imagine why you would ever need to do this, so this has never been an issue for me.

My preferred whitespace code-style is to use tabs for indentation What does "I convert it back to 4 space tabs before I commit anything" mean, then? If you're putting \t tabs in your file, 4 space tabs vs 8 space tabs refers to the way your editor renders \t. What are you changing before committing, your editor settings? Edit: oops, just realized you're not the person I was responding to. The convert it back before I…

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I was not the GP. Even if you use spaces rather than tabs, the idea is the same. Do you mean something like the below? Note: \t represents tabbing (not necessarily the number of tabs, just spacing using tabs), and _ represents spaces.

  int f(int x,
  \t\t__int y) // one 4-width tab, pad with spaces
  {
  \t\t// do stuff;
  }

  int f(int x,
  \t\t\t\tint y) // one 8-width tab, whoops
  {
  \t\t\t\t// do stuff;
  }
In this case, you should not be using tabs, since logically you haven't entered a new block yet and as such should not be increasing the indentation. It should be

  int f(int x
  ______int y)
  {
  \t\t// do stuff;
  }

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#28

Post by dwenzek »

akkartik wrote: post #13

I dunno, the first example seems unsatisfying. The original has that ugly condition, the "good" version seems overly clever. And for all the talk of taste and aesthetics, both versions ignore an elephant in the room: defensively dealing with `entry` being absent from the list. Not that I've never abused addresses like this. But having written this multiple times, I currently prefer something like this: remove_list_en…

> both versions ignore an elephant in the room: defensively dealing with `entry` being absent from the list.

Indeed, both versions really have a poor taste. Both are code snippets which can only work under very restrictive assumptions. The main argument `head` is implied and the `entry` to be removed must be present. Such piece of code has to be duplicated and tuned for every list and use case.

I even wonder why Linus bothered to show this example, while he leads one of the most famous software masterpiece.

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#29

Post by prewett »

yitchelle wrote: post #4
PJDK wrote: post #2

I was given a piece of advice very early on in my career that I've always been grateful for, which is fundamentally the same as this. IF and FOR are both code smells. One case of this is just simplifying loops with some functional goodness var listOfGoodFoos = new List (); for(var i = 0; i VS return listOfAllFoos.Where(x => x.IsGood); But perhaps a more interesting point is it can also be a a sign of DRY gone wrong -…

Does it come down to having a deeper understanding of what is available? In your example, I guess a new engineer may not know that Where() is available, but a seasoned engineer should know. I also think that this why the social aspect of code review is so important. It is a knowledge sharing mechanism. edit: grammar

In case any other seasoned C++ engineers are worried that they have missed something big in all the new C++ specs, the above code seems to be C#.

Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

#30

Post by [deleted] »

no_protocol wrote: post #12

> it only performed 256 loop iterations, one for each point along the edge alarm bells There are only 252 points along the edge. This code will act on each corner twice. If you were performing an operation like `+= 1` on each edge element, this code would be wrong. When you copy and paste it later and change all the `= 0` to something else, you might end up with an unfortunate surprise. Once I saw this mistake in the…

[deleted]
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