masukomi
THIS. So Much this.
This is what I am constantly trying to teach younger devs.
The best code is the most stupid-simple solution to the problem that runs in acceptable time.
The new intern fresh out of boot camp, with no understanding of the context should be able understand what it's doing.
Paul Cantrell
@masukomi @hrefna From an in-class activity I was just working up for the upcoming semester:
“In most circumstances, good code is not clever or complex; it is •obvious•.”
(Larger excerpt below for the curious. The activity involves reading different versions of English-language instructions for opening a door, ranging from absurd detail to “open the door.”)
Paul Cantrell
@masukomi @hrefna
Yeah, “obvious to whom?” and “who is the reader?” are subtle and crucial questions for all writing, code included.
masukomi
@inthehands @hrefna agreed, but i think there is an important aspect it’s missing. It should be obvious to juniors and new hires with no institutional knowledge.
To often we write code that is obvious to people who’ve been there for years but may as well be a paragraph of random jargon terms to an experienced new hire without the context
Paul Cantrell
@jjoelson @masukomi
Ah, yes, this is what microservices are for!
(For •creating• this problem, that is, not solving it)
Jonathan Joelson
@masukomi @inthehands It’s definitely good to avoid unnecessary complexity, but in real life projects I find that the biggest cause of bugs is duplicate sources of truth and data inconsistency across the system. Sometimes maintaining a single source of truth involves refactoring and creating abstractions which are not always simple.
Jonathan Joelson
@masukomi @inthehands I actually see a lot of bugs caused by devs trying to keep things as simple as possible in the micro, while accidentally introducing system-wide complexity via duplicate sources of truth.
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