Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

Post by dv_dt » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #115

His second example to "modularize" a branch condition is not functionally equivalent in _most_ in-use programming languages: valid_user = loggedIn() && hasRole(ROLE_ADMIN) valid_data = data != null && validate(data) if (valid_user && valid_data) … Is not equivalent to: if (loggedIn() && hasRole(ROLE_ADMIN) && data != null && validate(data)) … His version will always execute `validate(…)` if `data` is not null regardl…

Post by amirouche » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #113

reikonomusha wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's relevance in talking about both micro- and macroscopic guidelines. Both are important. Very rarely does someone "read" an entire code base "with one look" and be able to deduce issues. You do, at some point, have to get into the weeds. Managing that experience is what articles like these are about.

Yes, there is value in both, but I only ever see people talking about the former.

Post by ellyagg » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

loco5niner wrote: post #112

ViktorasM wrote: post #62

Stopped reading at "Place models, views and controllers in their own folders". No worse way to organize your code than classify by behavior type. "Here are all the daos", "here is all business logic", "here are all the controllers". You add a feature as small as resource CRUD and scatter it's pieces across the whole code base. No.

Honest question from someone with little real world experience outside .Net: This is MVC's convention, to "Place models, views and controllers in their own folders", and it's what I'm used to working with. Can you point me to resources outlining other methods (responding with google "XYZ" would be fine too).

Post by amirouche » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #121

pimlottc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using intermediate variables is one of the most underrated tools to make code more understandable. It's the definition of something completely unnecessary from a technical standpoint that is all about conveying meaning and clarity to other programmers. And it can be used to help group and "modularize" chunks of code within a routine without necessarily going to the extreme of pulling out a separate subroutine, which…

I think people underestimate the cost of vertical length. It's less obvious in small examples, but there's a huge difference in readability between a class or function that fits on one page and one that doesn't, so it's well worth making individual lines a bit less readable if it means you need less of them.

Post by amirouche » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #41

delecti wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently got a code review that in several places suggested I switch to the new Java 8 stream API [1]. I just flatly responded that it was far less readable, even if I could condense a half-dozen lines of code down to one. Where I can quickly scan over a foreach loop to get the jist of what it's doing, I have to closely examine each call in the new approach to have any idea what it's doing. [1] http://www.oracle.co…

I agree in general case, but this example transactions.stream() .filter(t -> t.getType() == Transaction.GROCERY) .sorted(comparing(Transaction::getValue).reversed()) .map(Transaction::getId) .collect(toList()); seems to be net improvement to me. It reads like SQL, and eliminates many causes of error (wrong indexing variables, off-by-one, copy-paste error in boilerplate). Yes it requires learning several new concepts,…