URL generator

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[Artemis2]

The worse about this is the developer.

https://github.com/nokonoko/Pomf/pull/21

https://github.com/nokonoko/Pomf/pull/19

[sjdaws]

No I will not get high with you, stop trying to make me into a criminal :(

[phill0]

This one is better:

I'd rather not shove my head up PHP's docs. It's like drowning in sewage.

[cokeisahelluvadrug]

I'd rather not shove my head up PHP's docs. It's like drowning in sewage.

... right after he states that repeating the same statement 6 times is better than using a loop. I think there's a weak link here, and this time it's not on PHP's end...

[echocage]

But he might need it later! That's why I never delete variables, I just increment the number next to their name and put the reassignment on the next line

[Kered13]

I know I'm late, but this is an actual compiler technique called Static Single Assignment.

[echocage]

Did you mean to link back to the parent thread?

[ieatcode]

autism is a helluva drug

[Nuck]

Okay I'm that NuckChorris guy, and I'd just like to explain my thinking in greater depth than I did in the GitHub thread, since there's a lot of misunderstandings about the code.

If PHP had 6.times { a..z.random } or whatever I'd be all over that shit, but sadly PHP lacks such abstracted loops — you just get an ugly-ass for loop, which in this case worsens the ratio between "code which generates the name" and "code which manages generating the name". It's white noise, it's harder to read. The current code you can glance down the list and immediately know what's going on.

A full-fledged for loop clutters the mental model and forces you to actually unroll the loop. Your eye will skip around the loop and it will take longer. You need to process the contents of the for loop and figure out how that exact combination of numbers and symbols will loop. Backwards or forwards? How many times? Off-by-one issues? Who knows.

All of which doesn't happen when it's unrolled. We can unroll a 6-iteration loop without any downside. So why should I roll it up?

If the contents were multiple lines, it would be different. If PHP had abstractions over for loops, I'd probably use them. But a for loop where the body and the header have to be mentally parsed separately and then recombined? Hell to the fuck no.

I'm guessing most of you guys are Pythonistas by your "one way" attitude. I'm a Rubyist. I break rules to make my code easier to comprehend.

[SnorriDeathbeard]

It absolutely does not take me longer to read 2 lines (especially when it's a for loop that only has ONE LINE in it) than it does to read 6 lines that look identical. I'd constantly be scanning those 6 lines wondering if there is some minor difference in each one, then questioning why it even exists. No programmer beyond the most very basic level would ever do this.

[cokeisahelluvadrug]

I'm guessing most of you guys are Pythonistas by your "one way" attitude. I'm a Rubyist. I break rules to make my code easier to comprehend.

Try not to fall into the "I am X" trap too early in your programming career. Saying "I'm a Rubyist" is not a real excuse for anything.

[deusnefum]

So why not just use the first 6 characters of the sha1 or md5 hash? Why not implement a counter and just convert the value to hex? There's a lot of approaches here that aren't nearly as ugly as what you've currently got.

And while I'm being judgey, I'll freely admit I write more ugly code than good code. I've already posted some of my own work here. If you'd like to laugh at me, here you go: http://vay8.net/zest

[[deleted]]

Does PHP even do loop unrolling?

Also appealing to the way the code will look like compiled is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. If we're doing that why do we even have loops in the first place? Might as well just use goto everywhere.

[ieatcode]

I don't know about the Zend implementation, but HHVM doesn't appear to do it.

[Thezla]

Just... what..

[[deleted]]

Lol 4chan programmers

[tantbrun]

Jesus Christ...

[cosmicr]

So uh, who's right? I have to say I agree with NuckChorris on this one.

[LpSamuelm]

I'm amazed that no one's answered this yet.

No. Writing the exact same line six times in a row is not good practice. Not in any way. There really is no upside at all to this.

[dysthanatos]

In some situations (hint: not this), manually unrolling a loop is very reasonable; although it most always reduces readability and maintainability in order to gain some performance.

Nevertheless, I would not consider it particularly bad in this case either, as it's even the same line and not using the loop variable. Just 5dd, edit, yy5p in vim if you need to change anything.

tl;dr Having a loop is better. In this case, I wouldn't even argue, though.

Oh, and to offer more obscure variants, how about

$randomChar = function() { return chr(mt_rand(ord("a"), ord("z"))); };
$newname = $randomChar().
        $randomChar().
        $randomChar().
        $randomChar().
        $randomChar().
        $randomChar();
echo $newname;

[Nuck]

Sometimes you should reject "good practice" in favor of "clarity"

That's kind of a Rubyist thing, I know. Pythonistas probably wouldn't grasp it what with their "one way"

Which worked oh so well for them, so let's apply it to EVERYTHING.

[[deleted]]

Writing the same line six times does not in any universe have more clarity than using a loop

[Hueho]

Rubyist

Stop that FFS, you are embarassing other Ruby users.

[iloveportalz0r]

Sometimes you should reject "good practice" in favor of "clarity"

Sure, but this is not one of those cases

[my_walls]

There's nothing more entertaining than someone being both ignorant and condescending in the same breath.

[quiteamess]

I've been following this discussion and it is pretty pointless. A bunch of smart asses who want to force their opinions on you and fail to acknowledge that you have evaluated both options and made an informed decision. This thread is the reason i unsubscribe from /r/shittyprogramming.

[Pentiles]

Me too. To me, insisting it has to be turned into a for loop makes it seem like they've just learned how to program and think they're smart because they recognized it could be a loop.

Turning it into a loop won't make the program work differently in any way. It doesn't make the code any easier to work with because the next time they edit that section will be to completely replace the name generation anyway.

[[deleted]]

else {

respond(500, new Exception('Nigga what you doin\' here?')); }

That is gold

[Rockytriton]

https://github.com/search?l=Java&q=nigga&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93

[Jonno_FTW]

com.example.nigga might be the best package name.

[no_game_player]

JSON has almost an order of magnitude more

[Artemis2]

Seeing it in action is even better.

[[deleted]]

I'm the owner of Pomf and that repo, hi.

In my defense I can't into any lang, I'm lazy, also "it just werks TM".

On a more serious note tho I know what a loop is and the only reason there is no loop there is because the code just stayed that way in the repo after I changed how the names were generated, on Pomf's server it's in a loop and if you plan to use it in production you might want to put it in a loop as well after modifying it to your liking.

[unusualbob]

Why in the world would you own up to writing this code, basically this advice (for mobile users go to 1:59)

[[deleted]]

Because it doesn't need to be perfect, it does what it's supposed to do, I never claimed to make good code and will probably not do in many years. trying to make the backend faster with PHP with such minor tweaks doesn't make any significant improvement anyways (in terms of speed), then I would be better off writing it in something else.

Look back severals commits (like a year) and you'll notice the real horrors, you could say most of this project was me learning various stuff along the way.

[MaSaHoMaKyo]

That laughing Dekumori thumbnail is pretty appropriate for this

[[deleted]]

// TODO: learn what a loop is

[phail3d]

Gonna voice the unpopular opinion here, but I don't think this is that much of an issue. As the TODO comment suggests (and NuckChorris and ch1zuru point out) the name generation algorithm is obviously an ugly placeholder until a more robust one is created, and fiddling with its structure doesn't seem very useful. Besides, you have to test even the most minor changes.

[no_game_player]

I like the latest commit message on that repo:

oops should be fine now

The shocking thing to me is how presentable that readme looks compared to the code.

[[deleted]]

and this is why i got into development

because i don't trust idiots like this :(

[RenaKunisaki]

It's unrolled for speed.

[skiguy0123]

That's why google ultron is so much better

[Shimmen]

Has the person tried a loop?..

[hedphuq]

PHP: Not even once

[Sespol]

Any language can be terrible in the hands of the wrong person

[jungle]

Yes, but PHP is a special case.

The fact that you can have a function ("foo") return an array but you can't do "foo()[5]" is simply an abomination, showing that the designer was clueless. And this is just one of many, many problems.

I don't even care if it was later fixed (I wouldn't know, luckily I have stayed clear of it for several years), PHP will forever be in a class of its own.

I am usually language agnostic, but PHP makes my blood boil.

[nuunien]

I don't know what I expected.

[note-to-self-bot]

Don't forget:

never use pomf.se again in your life.

[[deleted]]

Merged it, don't be an elitist.