←back to thread

Good Software Development Habits

(zarar.dev)
361 points mmphosis | 1 comments | 17 Nov 24 16:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
leetrout ◴[17 Nov 24 18:05 UTC] No.42165704[source]▶
> It's better to have some wonky parameterization than it is to have multiple implementations of nearly the same thing. Improving the parameters will be easier than to consolidate four different implementations if this situation comes up again.

Hard disagree. If you cant decompose to avoid "wonky parameters" then keep them separate. Big smell is boolean flags (avoid altogether when you can) and more than one enum parameter.

IME "heavy" function signatures are always making things harder to maintain.

replies(17): >>42165868 #>>42165902 #>>42166004 #>>42166217 #>>42166363 #>>42166370 #>>42166579 #>>42166774 #>>42167282 #>>42167534 #>>42167823 #>>42168263 #>>42168489 #>>42168888 #>>42169453 #>>42169755 #>>42171152 #
thfuran ◴[17 Nov 24 18:27 UTC] No.42165868[source]▶
I think it's especially bad advice with the "copy paste once is okay". You absolutely do not want multiple (even just two) copies of what's meant to be exactly the same functionality, since now they can accidentally evolve separately. But coupling together things that only happen to be mostly similar even at the expense of complicating their implementation and interface just makes things harder to reason about and work with.
replies(7): >>42166007 #>>42166141 #>>42166159 #>>42166278 #>>42166385 #>>42166712 #>>42187622 #
1. charles_f ◴[17 Nov 24 19:16 UTC] No.42166278[source]▶
That's not entirely true. The difference between intentional and accidental repetition is that the first occurs because the rule is the same in both repetitions, and should be the same ; whereas the second happens to be the same for now. In not repeating yourself in the second case you actually risk changing an operation that should remain the same, as a side effect of changing the common function to alter the behaviour of the first.

That's why DRY is a smell (indicates that something might be wrong) and not a rule.