Prefer duplication over the wrong abstraction (2016)

Post by DanielHB » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #325

ultim8k wrote: post #42

Nobody wants to listen. Nobody. In 90% of the companies there are some so called senior devs that get ecstatic when they create a new abstraction. Overengineering, abstractions and premature optimisation are the 3 worst plagues of engineering. At the same time I’m happy they exist because it means we’ll always have a job.

Remember, everyone else's job is simple and pointless, only your job is difficult and important. Therefore only your job could possibly need abstractions. Everyone else is just over engineering.

Post by pocksuppet » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

saghm wrote: post #76

Rendello wrote: post #36

Two talks come to mind here: Mike Acton's Data-Oriented Design and C++ [1] and Brian Cantrill's The Complexity of Simplicity [2]. Mike's talk argues that code solutions need not be modelled on the real world, and that different data creates different problems, which need different solutions. I can't do the talk justice, but it's had a big impact on me. Brian's talk is about abstraction generally, and how it's difficu…

> Mike's talk argues that code solutions need not be modelled on the real world, and that different data creates different problems, which need different solutions. I've always found it odd when even fairly smart engineers sometimes prioritize real-world metaphors over the actual needs of the codebase. Years ago when I was only a few years out of school, I was implementing a connection pool in Rust, and the most reas…

Post by pocksuppet » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #337

aftbit wrote: post #225

Similarly, I've seen some developers who seem to think that any inline string or numeric constant is evil. In one PR, I saw: HTTPS_SCHEME = 'https' DOMAIN = 'www.example.com' url = HTTPS_SCHEME + '://' + DOMAIN I don't understand what they think this is buying, other than just cargo culting "don't embed constants." And of course, the constant definitions were at the top of the file and the url building code was hundr…

That particular example doesn't quite fit, but I've certainly seen cases where otherwise perfectly ordinary fixed strings needed to be broken up to meet linting rules.

Post by saghm » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #343

saghm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mike's talk argues that code solutions need not be modelled on the real world, and that different data creates different problems, which need different solutions. I've always found it odd when even fairly smart engineers sometimes prioritize real-world metaphors over the actual needs of the codebase. Years ago when I was only a few years out of school, I was implementing a connection pool in Rust, and the most reas…

Didn't we all spend years and years learning that OOP is about writing "class Car extends Vehicle"?

Post by so-cal-schemer » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:09 PM UTC

Rendello wrote: post #36

Two talks come to mind here: Mike Acton's Data-Oriented Design and C++ [1] and Brian Cantrill's The Complexity of Simplicity [2]. Mike's talk argues that code solutions need not be modelled on the real world, and that different data creates different problems, which need different solutions. I can't do the talk justice, but it's had a big impact on me. Brian's talk is about abstraction generally, and how it's difficu…