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There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

steveonstuff.com

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Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#281

Post by [deleted] »

pydry wrote: post #178
rootlocus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One assert per test Was meant to make a failed test instantly communicate what's wrong with the unit under test. As frameworks evolve and our practices around them change, it's absolutely fine to come up with new rules. All of uncle Bobs rules come with pages of explanations of what problems they solve. If you don't have those problems, you may not need those solutions. The book is more about the spirit of the law…

This makes no sense whatsoever. I've read thousands of tests with multiple asserts that were perfectly plain about what was being tested and in many cases the logical sequence made it easier to understand. Breaking them into separate tests with one assert would simply have meant a shit ton more code to read. Uncle Bob's "rules" often come with mile long caveats that he seems to be blissfully unaware of. I think I get…

[deleted]

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#282

Post by edwnj »

skohan wrote: post #160
edwnj wrote: post #156

Na this is just semantics. There is clearly ugly code and clean code.. And generally speaking, ugly code is structured in a non obvious manner that can range from the specific implementation to naming.. Its a spectrum and after a certain point what is ugly/clean is very subjective but this is where semantics kicks in. Other than the occasional heated arguments, most teams can agree on what is ugly vs what is acceptab…

Disagree. I feel like I have seen this play out a number of times in my career: - New engineer joins a team with a mature codebase - New engineer complains about code quality, convinces management on a total rewrite to improve code quality - New codebase starts out simple and elegant - Eventually the codebase gets just as bulky and convoluted as the old one, because the ugliness was just a reflection of the complexit…

I think your mistaking technical debt for code quality.

I've seen the same thing play out and more often than not, its a helix like cycle of projects starting simple and as time goes on trade offs are made and you get a lot technical debt then you rewrite and the cycle begins again.

I partly agree with you about "ugly=not written by me", I just think that only happens at the edges aka semantics.. Nowadays its pretty easy for teams to come to a consensus on whats clean/ugly vs acceptable/subjective.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#283

Post by onion2k »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #105
onion2k wrote: post #59

The Uncle Bob Martin definition of "clean code" from his book "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" is a set of rules that absolutely are not at odds with one another. If you follow them you will end up with code that's really nice to read and easier to maintain, and, most importantly, that you can confidently change. There's a decent summary here - https://gist.github.com/wojteklu/73c6914cc446146b…

> that you can confidently change. There is no secret to this, it's merely tests, no matter how clean my code is I would not feel confident unless I have tested my changes, whether manually or automatically and manually quickly becomes intractable. There is the option of formal verification, but I have found the tooling to be disagreeable with me.

If your code is complex you can't ever be sure that you're testing the right things, or that there isn't a codepath that your tests miss. Tests are very useful, but they're not a replacement for simple code.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#284

Post by jtwebman »

Wow the font and color of the text sucks to read on that blog. I think maybe he has been stuck in C# or Java land to long. I do agree with him though that we need to provide more details on what makes it clean to you if you are saying that.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#285

Post by agr1277 »

jtwebman wrote: post #284

Wow the font and color of the text sucks to read on that blog. I think maybe he has been stuck in C# or Java land to long. I do agree with him though that we need to provide more details on what makes it clean to you if you are saying that.

Black on white? The readability of this text is... totally unremarkable?

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#286

Post by websitescenes »

musingsole wrote: post #265
websitescenes wrote: post #258

Wow, this post has triggered some emotion from me. I find it incredibly traumatic working with “engineers” that have this point of view. The pain individuals like this inflict on others is real! What they are really saying is that they don’t care about their fellow developers, their productivity nor happiness. This view will lead to “good enough” code that always appears to “work” but fails easily and creates more wo…

As one of those very harmful devs you're referring to, I think you have it backwards. From my perspective, anyone who lionizes linting and arbitrary practices as "best" is actively harmful to whatever mission my team may have. Readability matters; maintainability matters; functionality matters more. The longer you talk about proper tab spacing, the less time you're talking about algorithm optimization. If you care so…

“Readability matters; maintainability matters; functionality matters more. The longer you talk about proper tab spacing, the less time you're talking about algorithm optimization.”

Totally agree, these things matter most. Maybe I missed the point of the article if you think that’s what I’m arguing against.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#287

Post by nfw2 »

skohan wrote: post #173
jcbrand wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in university I had an experience that was really instructive. For a project we had to write a program that differentiates mathematical equations. I dove in and just started writing code. Eventually, I realized that I had made a design error and that my code was much more complicated and cumbersome than it needed to be and I was getting stuck due to the complexity of the monstrosity I created. Unfortunately I fi…

Yeah this just hasn't been my experience. If you're working on a house you measure twice and cut once because the cost of reworking physical materials is a lot more expensive than the cost of doing a second measurement. If you could delete half your house and re-build it at zero cost, it might be more valuable to just go for the first attempt and learn from it rather than trying to do everything in theory up front. I…

Usually you can't delete half your codebase and re-build it at zero cost. The cost of developing a codebase is often the primary cost for software companies.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#288

Post by mint2 »

runald wrote: post #200
gefhfffh wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When can you rebuild at zero cost? I have made similar avoidable mistakes of not thinking it through enough, could have saved me a lot of rewriting, which was pretty expensive

Probably not literally without cost, but if the code was written with disposability in mind combined with just a little bit of pre-planning, then rewriting or refactoring should be indeed trivial.

Not having to pay for physical materials doesn’t mean there are no costs. Throwing hours, days, or weeks of focused work time out the window does not sound cost free to me or Whoever signs paychecks.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#289

Post by hinkley »

skohan wrote: post #153
rawoke083600 wrote: post #135

So True ! After 25+ years of coding, I know one thing. I STILL don't know how to "code correctly". And apart from a few gifted individuals (Rob Pike, Fabrice Bellard Bobby Bingham [ffMpeg team] etc) I'm HIGHLY suspicious of ppl and programmers who claim "they can program correctly" and that "this xyz is the correct way/stack/method/arch". Background:CS grad, start coding at around 13 (thank you dad !) I am well verse…

The more code I've written, the less I care about code quality. I think the things I could point to in my coding practice which would make the code I write now better than the code I wrote 10 years ago would be: - I minimize interdependencies (changing a line of code should not affect something un-related) - I go for abstractions later, only when I need them, rather than trying to think of the perfect abstraction/des…

I still care, but the things I fret about have shifted substantially.

There are many categories of code problem that you don’t have to get right the first time. Some things can grow organically. But there are combinations that can be extremely resistant to change.

In particular, shared state is both state and coupling. Global shared state is a fucking nightmare, and almost made me quit my current job a couple months in.

I thought I could fix it, but I underestimated the number of hands in the code, and the longevity of the alliances I could make to get it done. The thing with a hideous mess is that the people who don’t mind it stick around, and they probably made it in the first place. Mostly what’s kept me here is the pandemic, and he fact that a lot of my energy is now in a hobby, not invested in my job. The tiebreaker was that some self-aware wolves have found slightly better code patterns and I have been exploiting that all I can. Write more like that, delete code like this ASAP. We have spent much of the last 18 months working on things I identified in my first six weeks. Not always in the most healthy way, but at least some people are looking at it.

Re: There’s No Such Thing as Clean Code

#290

Post by mypalmike »

ajuc wrote: post #7
robertlagrant wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 short functions definitely sound as though they should be explicit. Named, documented, testable. 1 or 2 you could get away with being implicit. 20 requires a lot of understanding as to what's going on!

Task: write code that does genetic programming by applying combination of 20 specific 5-line functions in random combinations and comparing results. My solution: array of lambdas Your solution: array of references to functions named f1 .. f20. Which is cleaner?

The one with the names.
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