So much of the horribly unmaintainable code I've come across was the result of overengineering that whenever I see an abstraction I have a compulsive urge to scream into the void. Some (the simplest ones) are ok, but other times an abstraction that seems like a good idea on day 0 evolves into an unmanageable hodgepodge of hacks that makes an innocent developer that bumps into it years later question their choice of career.
Don't be clever
131–140 of 231 posts
Re: Don't be clever
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a blog post with the title "Don't be clever" ending up with the author's answer being an even clever-er solution, than talking about the hidden fight against complexity in software, was an odd ending note.
It's not a clever-er solution? As an example, `php artisan make:controller` and potentially some custom derivatives is going to solve like 95% of what he was trying to abstract.
Until something goes wrong, and you didn't write it. At that point, have fun.
Re: Don't be clever
#133> Yes, I had failed to see the proper solution: a class generator — so that I didn't have to manually copy code again No, please don't. This is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If you think abstract base classes can be clever and hard to understand, code generators can be even more so. In addition, because code generators are a one way conversion, and the generated code evolves independently and the code ge…
Generating code is fine, if the generated code strictly never evolves independently of what it is generated from. For instance generating libraries from .proto files (or other declarative schema definition solutions) works really well. If the schema changes, you throw away the old generated code and generate brand new code, no problem. But if you want to make even a single tiny modification to one of the generated fi…
> For instance generating libraries from .proto files (or other declarative schema definition solutions) works really well.
...does it ? Generated ones always feel being mismatched with the language paradigms. Maybe that's just my nightmares of dealing with MS Graph generated vomit hose of a library...
Re: Don't be clever
#134I’ve been working with Prisma and React Query recently and I wonder if those libraries haven’t fallen victim to the same trap. They seem to want to ”do everything you could possibly want to do, in a clean wrapper”.
But I wonder if they are trying to wrap domains that are too big to wrap, and should just be left to a programming language.
Re: Don't be clever
#135> Yes, I had failed to see the proper solution: a class generator — so that I didn't have to manually copy code again No, please don't. This is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If you think abstract base classes can be clever and hard to understand, code generators can be even more so. In addition, because code generators are a one way conversion, and the generated code evolves independently and the code ge…
As a blog post with the title "Don't be clever" ending up with the author's answer being an even clever-er solution, than talking about the hidden fight against complexity in software, was an odd ending note.
I didn't find either all that clever. It was premature abstraction, followed by abstraction-lite.
Re: Don't be clever
#136Right now, I'm working on two databases that almost do the same thing. One is legacy, the other is the new and improved. I can't delete the old one because there are several teams that generate their reports from it, I can't delete the new one because new functionality depends on it.
When we add a new feature, we run update queries on both databases (but not always). We need several months of work and create training for everyone to move to the new DB. The business does not recognize the work as valuable so we continue to do this dance.
How did we get here? Someone with great intentions thought "I hate this crappy mssql db, I'll create a new modern one". That person has left the company many years ago. This is now my real life example for "... now you have two problems"
Re: Don't be clever
#137> Yes, I had failed to see the proper solution: a class generator — so that I didn't have to manually copy code again No, please don't. This is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If you think abstract base classes can be clever and hard to understand, code generators can be even more so. In addition, because code generators are a one way conversion, and the generated code evolves independently and the code ge…
Code generators can work if you .gitignore the target folders, so everything generated must be used as-is or augmented by a separate handwritten file like a subclass. And to integrate them tightly into your build process so the generator tool runs transparently.
But even then they're a nightmare because your errors don't match your source files.
"generate and edit" is suicide. "generate and treat the outputs as intermediate compilation objects" is merely an incredibly painful tool of last resort.
Re: Don't be clever
#138> Yes, I had failed to see the proper solution: a class generator — so that I didn't have to manually copy code again No, please don't. This is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If you think abstract base classes can be clever and hard to understand, code generators can be even more so. In addition, because code generators are a one way conversion, and the generated code evolves independently and the code ge…
This whole article is about whether to do or not, and I dig the lesson here. The author built on monstrosity they hate, and they propose perhaps creating another. How bold & brave!
Of course lots and lots of people love telling us why not to do things. This is the cosmic-brain point of Steve Yegge's "Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus", of what we let guide us. Is it trying and hope and doing? When and where do we allow reservation in? https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150
Re: Don't be clever
#139> Yes, I had failed to see the proper solution: a class generator — so that I didn't have to manually copy code again No, please don't. This is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If you think abstract base classes can be clever and hard to understand, code generators can be even more so. In addition, because code generators are a one way conversion, and the generated code evolves independently and the code ge…
My understanding is that in this case, the code generator is merely a boilerplate generator that isn’t meant to keep the code in sync, but just do the initial copy/paste work. I think code generators are a perfectly acceptable solution in cases like this, when the starting point all looks the same, and it needs to diverge from there. Especially if the generation logic is fairly straightforward. There are a lot of IDE…
If scaffolding is generating more than an SMS worth of code per file, it will drive you crazy because you still want to keep it in sync.
Re: Don't be clever
#140I have swung both ways and I think I now settle somewhere near "boring is good" and "repetition is harmless (compared to the astronomic costs of wrong abstraction)". Especially repetition seems to be hated with the might of a thousand suns and while I get it, because I myself hated it, I now can see the beauty of it. What is currently a superficial repetition - a bunch of endpoint handlers, some forms - will often tu…
My rules is never copy paste. If it's worth repeating, it's worth typing.