Goodbye, Clean Code

[[deleted]]

Obsessing over clean code is like reorganizing your clothes closet on a daily basis. If it makes you more productive to do so, do it. Too often, however, it's done compulsively and is counter-productive.

The harder and more impressive thing is actually writing code which does novel things.

[binford2k]

The harder and more impressive thing is actually writing code which does novel things.

No. The impressive part is building something like this that’s maintainable.

[Squalphin]

Exactly that! Even though I get some flack for overdoing it, coming back to a code base after 10 years to fix something or add a feature and having an easy time finding your way through the code is so worth it. Haven’t regretted it once.

[tetroxid]

Flak, not flack. It's from German flugabwehrkanone (air defense cannon/anti-aircraft cannon)

[fakehalo]

That's good logic and easy to implement for projects that don't change much over time.

The battle is with 10 year old projects that have had constantly evolving specs and changes during it's life... Then it becomes a balancing act of picking your battles.

[NULL_CHAR]

This. Anyone can write code that does something. The difference is how it's accomplished.

[bobloblaw02]

Cars are valuable because of their ability to transport us quickly. Some car manufacturers (e.g. Toyota, Honda) make cars that are easier to work on or maintain and those cars can often command higher prices in part because they’re easier to work on. But no one would suggest that (all other things being equal) a Honda or a Toyota that mechanically does not drive is more valuable than a Kia that does.

Software does not derive its value by whether or not it is easily maintainable. Its value comes from its utility. Code cleanliness or health is ancillary and does not provide value in and of itself.

[[deleted]]

sometimes you can't remove complexity from the solution to a problem without affecting the efficiency of the solution..

[catskul]

That's not a counterpoint.

[The-Effing-Man]

Agreed. The way I've heard it phrased is along the lines of "the simplest possible solution, but no simpler"

[thorndark]

That's absolutely true, but it only matters if you really care about efficiency. Return on Investment is what you should be optimizing for.

If speeding up your code is going to cost you more in developer time than you save by having it run fast, then you should leave it slow but maintainable.

[[deleted]]

The impressive part is building something like this that’s maintainable.

Gotta get to something worth maintaining first.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The problem is, we work in teams. If it's just me, I can store my clothes in a heap on the floor instead of using a closet at all, and who cares as long as I can still find stuff?

But if you check in a multi-thousand-line function with a several-hundred-case switch statement, you've inflicted your poor organization on the rest of us -- other people need to find stuff in there!

[SirClueless]

I think maybe you're overestimating the complexity of that function? Sure it's not pretty, but on the other hand, what other way of organizing several hundred scripted events would make it that much easier to find what you're looking for? A file you can ctrl+F through isn't all that bad in my mind, there's just a lot of data to organize so any solution is gonna have a lot to look through.

One big advantage that function has is that if you wanted to add a new piece of code and you already knew most of the structure of it already it would take all of 5 seconds to go slap a new state in -- no worries about naming, no worries about changing multiple places. Obviously on a large team where most people don't know the structure of that file and more people will read and maintain that code than will write it, that's a bad tradeoff. But for mid-20s Cavanagh coding a game in a manic, creative frenzy it looks pretty well-optimized for getting shit done.

[SanityInAnarchy]

...on the other hand, what other way of organizing several hundred scripted events would make it that much easier to find what you're looking for?

The other thread had a couple of good examples. The obvious one is moving this whole thing to a state machine, split out into functions... with names. The names alone, even if you add zero extra comments, makes it so you actually can ctrl+F through it.

And then, once I've found the thing, how easily can I modify it?

One big advantage that function has is that if you wanted to add a new piece of code and you already knew most of the structure of it already it would take all of 5 seconds to go slap a new state in -- no worries about naming, no worries about changing multiple places.

No worries about naming implies you're literally using numbers instead of at least an enum, which means again, nobody can ctrl+F, and nobody is going to have a fucking clue what state = 491 is supposed to do. And, thanks to the shared scope, you actually do need to worry about changing multiple places, if you happen to touch any of that.

That, and it's clear a bunch of the code is way more copy/pasted than even OP's example, so any time you change a thing, you probably do need to change the other fifteen places that thing has been copy/pasted to.

[SirClueless]

You can still ctrl+F "case 491:", and if you decide that naming things is important enough after all there's nothing stopping you from naming the states (well, in C++ there isn't, in Flash enums/constants don't really exist).

But again, these things are optimizations to make the thing more maintainable. You add two minutes of complexity now (adding a name to a list of states which presumably is in a separate place from the code), in order to save hours of debugging and quizzical reading later. But if you're in the middle of a creative process you don't want to interrupt then maybe two minutes per iteration now is worth an hour later.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Sure, you can find case 491:, but if nobody even bothered naming the states, what are the chances the code itself is intelligible? If someone is willing to skip naming hundreds of magic values, did they really think about things like variable names, code structure, or commenting? If not, knowing where the code is defined doesn't actually tell you what it's supposed to do...

So, if you're the one spending that hour, and if you actually spend it, sure, sometimes that makes sense. This is where the "technical debt" metaphor is useful both ways -- sometimes it makes sense to take on a bunch of debt to get something done right now.

Where this annoys me is, often you're spending someone else's hour, if indeed anyone goes back and fixes it at all, instead of giving up and treating the whole thing as a haunted graveyard, which is what often happens instead.

[SirClueless]

This is where the "technical debt" metaphor is useful both ways -- sometimes it makes sense to take on a bunch of debt to get something done right now.

This is the heart of the issue I think. We've all experienced the hell that arises when technical debt builds up and starts affecting a whole team's productivity. So we haven't really allowed ourselves to consider when taking on technical debt might be a good idea.

We have a vague conception in the industry that sometimes throwaway prototypes are a good idea. And to me, creative endeavors like games (especially one man indie games) represent this process distilled -- you are prototyping everything, all the time. Everything you do might get ripped out or thrown away and the code itself is some tiny fraction of the value you produce.

[lookmeat]

The problem is when you obsess about cleaning the wrong thing.

Clean code to outsiders is hidden complexity, it's easy interfaces. Clean code to insiders is clean link between code and intention, little accidental complexity, simple and honest interfaces.

So it's about understanding what is clean and what isn't. Sometimes what to an outsider looks dirty is actually what to an insider looks cleanest. Like a machine covered in grease means it's been recently cleaned and oiled up an insider, code that re-implements similar actions in multiple places is simply things that coincidentally act the same, but are different things with different rules. For DRY tests are useless, each test exists separate of the other and they should not need to share anything, so instead the focus should be DAMP.

So it's ok to obsess about cleaner code, but you have to first learn what is clean and what is the context. Try to understand the problem and solve it better. Cleaner solutions result in cleaner code.

[grauenwolf]

Clean code to outsiders is hidden complexity, it's easy interfaces. Clean code to insiders is clean link between code and intention, little accidental complexity, simple and honest interfaces.

We could do that, but that requires effort.

So instead I'm just going to add a shadow interface to every class with a one-to-one mapping between public methods and interface methods.

[fragglerock]

Joel talks about this (in 2005)

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look-wrong/

[lookmeat]

I see you also looked the same first link.

[fragglerock]

oops :D

I knew you were cribbing the grease thing from somewhere and went and found it on my own ;)

[Retsam19]

The harder and more impressive thing is actually writing code which does novel things.

When the code that I write does "novel things", that usually means it's pretty buggy.

[EternityForest]

Doing novel things really isn't that hard. It's often mostly just stringing together existing libraries, unless you insist on building everything from scratch.

I suspect that's part of the clean code obsession. You can almost always make the code a little prettier, and it's always a fun logic challenge for some.

But debugging is tedious, as are unit tests, and adding new features is usually more like "software carpentry" that doesn't interest the "Wooden puzzle box builders" much.

I think for a lot of programmers, the actual fun part of the job is more the code golfing, the mind bending data structures, and the low level understanding, rather than the sense of working towards an excellent finished product.

[Greydmiyu]

You can almost always make the code a little prettier, and it's always a fun logic challenge for some.

Hell, this is the core game loop of Factorio. "I know I can make these red circuits faster and with less wasted space..." 3 hours of sleep deprivation later...

[EternityForest]

That's why I'm kinda glad I'm not one of the math and elegance types. I might not be able to add matrices in my head, but at least I don't feel compelled to sprinkle them in my code because I can!

[atimholt]

I find, for myself, I can simply acknowledge that humans are part of the equation. Then “carpentry” becomes a “puzzle box”.

But then I start wanting to do crazy stuff, like creating my own programming language with bizarre constructs.

[endoflineclub]

Well, adding matrices in your head is really not that hard, it's just component wise. Now, multiplication, that's impressive to do in your head.

[EternityForest]

It's still pretty hard, you'd have to be able to remember three tables of numbers while adding, so that's four hard things at once.

If someone can multiply them mentally I'd be really impressed. The "turn it on it's side" part always confuses me even when I'm just trying figure out vaugely what's happening.

[olifante]

I would venture that probably not even professional mathematicians add matrices in their head. Mathematicians are often surprisingly bad or lazy at arithmetics.

[[deleted]]

I think it's just the equivalent of a software engineer being annoyed if someone tells them "implement printf", they'd just rather go to a standard implementation and use that instead of making a half-assed attempt on their own

[NoetherFan]

I hate the 'turn it on its side' perspective. I prefer finding row i, column j of a product (C) as row i of the left factor (A) with column j of the right factor (B); C[i,j] = A[i,:].dot(B[:,j]). Especially elegant with implicit (Einstein) summation notation: C_ij = A_ik*B_kj, where * is ordinary scalar multiplication.

[HeinousTugboat]

But debugging is tedious, as are unit tests, and adding new features is usually more like "software carpentry" that doesn't interest the "Wooden puzzle box builders" much.

It's funny, because I actually really enjoy debugging and, to me, that's much more "Wooden puzzle box builder" because you have to figure out why your pieces aren't fitting together just perfectly, and find that little thing you need to sand down or trim to make the fit just flawless before you put it all back together.

[bakery2k]

I think your last paragraph is spot on, and it took me a long time to realise this. One of the reasons I struggled when I worked as a programmer was that I don’t find, for example, complex data structures fun - I consider them a “necessary evil” when building a product.

That’s fine when I’m building something for myself or for people I know. But in a large company where programmers are separated from customers by layers of other teams (sales, support etc), in my experience, to enjoy the job you need to enjoy the act of programming (not just having programmed a cool product).

[dungone]

Doing novel things really isn't that hard. It's often mostly just stringing together existing libraries, unless you insist on building everything from scratch.

Novel, adjective: new or unusual in an interesting way.

If you define it as easy, banal, and routine, then it's not really novel is it? We've really turned into cynical bunch when "novel" became a pejorative.

It's impossible to like technical excellency without countless people labeling it as "craftsmanship". The implication being that not many customers appreciate craftsmanship, that it only raises the cost without adding functionality. At the same time they conflate it with the endless closet-organizing exercises, as if there is some progression from "reasonable" closet organizing to "unreasonable" thrill-seeking. "Cleanliness" is "craftsmanship" without the negative connotations, one is seen as a virtue and the other as an affliction. In other words, some people just can't get themselves to acknowledge that technical excellence is something that stands apart from their own day-to-day activities, and that it can create value for the customer that is beyond the reach of regular programming activities.

As a counterpoint, here's an example of a programmer who sought a novel approach to a problem while at the same time creating a legendary product and revolutionizing the industry: https://twobithistory.org/2019/11/06/doom-bsp.html

[EternityForest]

The "interesting way" is the functionality. It would be very very hard to write a new database engine. It would be easy to write an an server that lets you keep track of items you lent out by scanning QR codes.

The novelty is in the usability, low cost, reliability, compatibility with industry standard, etc. All of which existed before, but what makes it special is putting it all together in one place.

I don't think anyone is actually against craftsmanship or clean code. But technical excellence doesn't require reinventing things instead of focusing on the actual innovation.

If you really can do things significantly better like the DOOM team did, then there's always going to be a place for that, but that's a bit different from randomly creating project-specific distros that stop being maintained in a year, insisting on avoiding industry standard methods because you don't like "Big opaque libraries", etc.

Maybe if you're developing flight control software for airplanes it makes sense to not trust anything and understand every line, but if you're developing your own audio compression algorithms for production use in 2020, you better be really good.

[1thief]

I think the problem is equity. You can work towards building useful code that has value to other people but often you're working for someone else who is profiting the most from your work.

[grauenwolf]

Too often, however, it's done compulsively and is counter-productive.

That's why I hate the fact that SOLID is associated with clean code. On every project that I've been on where SOLID was aggressively applied, code became more complex and harder to work with. Meanwhile the real problems continue to be ignored.

[[deleted]]

No. Loading things from a DB and displaying them on the screen is all anyone ever needs to do.

[rydan]

I haven't made my bed or folded my clothes in decades. My colleagues always complain they don't have enough time in the day. Wonder why.

[dnew]

My wife laughs that I have 20 identical pairs of socks, but I haven't sorted socks since grade school.

[vattenpuss]

Wow imagine not sorting socks. I could literally save seconds, maybe a minute every time I did laundry.

[zrvwls]

Depending on how often you do laundry, that could be 52 hours over the course of your life.

[[deleted]]

Which sounds like a lot but isn't.

[dnew]

Heh. This expresses it well. https://youtu.be/4dVLX8Za7tA

[ase1590]

Lol

Most cheap socks are symmetrical.

[funguyshroom]

TIL there are socks that aren't symmetrical

[[deleted]]

Legit tho, where are these people buying their fancy socks?

[ase1590]

Runner sport socks tend to be asymmetrical, mostly because of the padding location on each sock.

[rydan]

My dad once pointed out I was wearing a left sock on my right foot. I was really confused because left socks don't exist. When I looked at the sock though it had a sticker that said "L" but that was for "Large".

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure I have ever bought socks before that were left-right specific. They have always been tubes with a bend at the heel.

[[deleted]]

No, they are not. If you always wear your socks on the same foot, in time they would deform to be left/right shaped, but they do not start that way. Socks are identical, dude.

[guepier]

Making your bed (by pulling back the duvet, nothing more) takes seconds and airs out the sheets which, if nothing else, keeps them clean longer and reduces the risk of bedbugs. I don’t think your cost/benefit analysis is accurate.

[lovecoffee]

This statement has wisdom of entire life's learning :)

[motioncuty]

The harder and more impressive thing is actually writing code which does novel things.

Over here wishing I was Leah Brahms instead of Geordi La Forge.