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The 4-chan Go programmer

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Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#21

Post by binary132 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15
zimpenfish wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" I once had to deal with a HTTP handler that called `Validate` on interface A which called `Validate` on interface B which called `Validate` on interface C which called `Validate` on interface D which finally did the actual work. There was a lot of profanity that month.

I mean to a point that makes sense; you got your base data types like idk, a bank account number which can be validated, which is inside a bank account which can be validated, which is in a customer which can be validated, etc etc. Visitor pattern style, I believe?

imagine allowing invalid values to exist

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#22

Post by eddd-ddde »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

The coder spectrum, scientists on one end, software engineers on the other. Only balance can save us.

I have read code used in research papers. The theoretical math usually goes beyond my comprehension, so I always dive into the code to better understand the logic, only to find... it's way worse... unintelligible.

At the end of the day we are used to what we do, and anything different will be foreign to us.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#23

Post by fragmede »

quickthrowman wrote: post #20
HideousKojima wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be confused with (current? former?) Google employee Christopher Poole, but I guess that's a moot point at this point.

Something awful must’ve happened to that guy in the past.

stop. that sort of college humor has no place on this site.

edit: going to digg my own grave and complain about the downvotes.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#24

Post by mbivert »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

> I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it.

Over-engineering is a common cause: simple solutions can be deceitfully difficult to find. That being said, additional indirection layers are usually justified by the overall architecture, and — assuming they're reasonable — can't always be appreciated locally.

  « I'm always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who'd have guessed sophistication bought such noise? » (Dick Gabriel)

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#25

Post by Misdicorl »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

Ignoring inexperience/incompetence as a reason (which, admittedly, is a likely root cause) domain fuzziness is often a good explanation here. If you aren't extremely familiar with a domain and know the shape of solution you need a-priori all those levels of indirection allow you to keep lots of work "online" while (replacing, refactoring, experimenting) with a particular layer. The intent should be to "find" the right shape with all the indirection in place and then rewrite with a single correct shape without all the indirection. Of course, the rewrite never actually happens =)

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#26

Post by ozr »

binary132 wrote: post #21
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to a point that makes sense; you got your base data types like idk, a bank account number which can be validated, which is inside a bank account which can be validated, which is in a customer which can be validated, etc etc. Visitor pattern style, I believe?

imagine allowing invalid values to exist

Sounds awful.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#27

Post by withinboredom »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

As a software engineer, this is something I get onto with my team. There is a such thing as too much abstraction and indirection. Abstraction should serve a purpose; don’t create an interface until you have more than one concrete implementation (or plan to within a PR or two). Premature abstraction is a type of premature optimization, just in code structure instead of execution.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#28

Post by tomcam »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

    I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders.
Trigger warning next time. I was trying to eat lunch

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#29

Post by jdc0589 »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

this is the classic over abstraction problem so that you can change things behind an interface at some point down the line if you ever need to while being totally opaque to any consuming code.

A lot of languages force you to start with this from day one, unless you want to go refactor everything to use an interface later on, so people just do it even when there will literally never be a reason to (and for testability, sometimes).

The cool thing about Go is the interface system is inverted kind of like duck-typing, so if you write purely idiomatic Go, then the thing receiving an arg in a function call is the one specifying the interface it must meet, rather than the implementing code having to declare every interface that some implementation meets.

People screw this up a lot though, especially if they came from Java/C# backgrounds.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#30

Post by weitendorf »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

This is actually really bad practice and a very “over eager junior engineer” way of writing software. You’re not off base at all that it seems excessive and confusing. It’s the kind of thing that seems technically complex and maybe even “elegant” (in isolation, when you first write the “interesting” code) at first but becomes a technical nightmare when used in real software that has to grow around and with it. You’re actually more on point in worrying about the understandability and debuggability this introduces.

I spent the better part of two years unfucking some Go software that (among other things) misused channels. The problem with channels is that you rarely actually need them, but can use them for a lot of different things without too much initial difficulty.

I think a good litmus test for proper use of channels is if you answer no to “could this be done with a direct function call instead?” and “can I use a wait group or mutex instead”, and yes to (zooming out a bit to think about what kind of decisions you previously made that led you to think about using channels) “am I really benefitting from concurrency/parallelism enough to justify the technical complexity of debugging concurrent code”.

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