Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
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Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#2I 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 return listOfAllFoos.Where(x => x.IsGood);
A connected piece of advice was "it is easier to push things together than pull them apart" so err on the side of assuming two bits of code are not the same, knowing you can refactor them together later (probably only a few hours later) if it turns out they are in fact pretty similar.
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#3I think "competitive" (i.e. solving algorithmic challenges for fun) coding really gives you some insight into how to write code that's short and to the point. The user with the most reputation on LeetCode, for example, consistently posts solutions that are surprisingly short, efficient, and readable.
https://discuss.leetcode.com/user/stefanpochmann
(some random examples)
https://discuss.leetcode.com/topic/18731/7-lines-c-c
https://discuss.leetcode.com/topic/16988/7-lines-3-easy-solu...
https://discuss.leetcode.com/topic/33430/6-lines-o-log-min-m...
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#4I 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
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#5I would argue for the last example it is better to write split the loop into four. I believe the intention is even clearer (because you are doing four different things), and that it is also faster even when optimizations are off due to better cache behavior. It may also make a smart but not "sufficiently smart" compiler to transform two of the loops into simple memset.
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#6The root of the problem is that "the thing that points to an entity" is not a consistent concept in this kind list. Sometimes it's "head", sometimes it's an entity's ->next. I wonder what Linus would think of implementing the linked list with a dummy head node, having no value and pointing to the first entity. Personally, I think that would be tasteful. It allows for simple loops like the "good taste" one, but you don't have to think so hard about how to implement a simple operation like remove. You don't need the added indirection.
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#7I 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 -…
I use eight space tabs when I write C, to force myself to think twice about using if, for, and nested loops
(I convert it back to 4 space tabs before I commit anything)
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#8These 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 under huge pressure to get shit done. Not get it done perfectly, not done beautifully, but just done in the first place. We rarely have the leeway to spend extra time refining existing code, existing features or bugfixes, to make them prettier. It's gotta be done, and it's gotta be done yesterday because maybe some other part of the project is blocked because of it or some customer paid for it and it was supposed to be done last month or it broke and why the hell isn't it fixed yet!?
Some projects, I daresay mostly open-source projects, can afford to be detached from the pressure of deadlines that corporations require, and reject code that isn't to their quality standards. Sadly, that's not the case for most of us.
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#9I 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 -…
I use eight space tabs when I write C, to force myself to think twice about using if, for, and nested loops (I convert it back to 4 space tabs before I commit anything)
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.
Re: Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement
#10I 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
Absolutely - it's why the advice was so good as it led me to trying to discover alternative patterns that remove the ifs.
On our team I try and code reviews to both be about code quality and learning. Reasonably often we'll go down mini rabbit holes about different ways things could be written and the various merits of them. We also try and have more than two people reviewing to spread the learning even more. That can make it worthwhile rewriting good sections of code to be worse just to discuss why the original way was better.
As a junior I learnt a great deal from reviewing the senior devs' code.