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I don't know about doing this in a project you're being paid for, it certainly increases the cognitive load of reading a codebase where simple things are done d

I don't know about doing this in a project you're being paid for, it certainly increases the cognitive load of reading a codebase where simple things are done differently all over the place. Four years in I'm hoping the OP has seen a pretty broad range of different styles and approaches and is now ready to hone their craft with smaller improvements, and is no longer struggling just to get something working so they now have some extra energy to put towards maintainability and overall system design. It might be better to try to define and refine a consistent style that can be applied to an entire project, that way you have to evaluate all the options, and do everything intentionally, but also you're not sending the next dev back to the syntax manual every time they try to read a new function.

klibertp 9y ago
> it certainly increases the cognitive load of reading a codebase where simple things are done differently all over the place. But simple things are being done differently anyway, all the time. There's too much variation in how you can code anything. The most trivial functions, like leftPad, can have dozens of implementations across a couple of projects - each as correct as the others, some abstracted, some inlined. Above a certain proficiency level, programmers are expected to intelligently recognize leftPad when they see it, even if it's called `frobnicate` and is implemented backwards (whatever that would look like). How can you expect programmers to do this without them going through a large set of sample implementations? Are they going to wake up some day to realize they got enlightened and now have no problems with dealing with leftPad in any of its many forms? I find the argument of "increased cognitive load" entirely unconvincing. Yes, the code should be optimized for reading. But, as every writer knows, how you write depends on who are you addressing. In other words, it's both insulting and counterproductive to write your code as if your readers are bird-brains with severely damaged hippocampus. Your readers are professional programmers who know their craft - possibly better than you do - so have a little faith in them!

klibertp 9y ago

> it certainly increases the cognitive load of reading a codebase where simple things are done differently all over the place. But simple things are being done differently anyway, all the time. There's too much variation in how you can code anything. The most trivial functions, like leftPad, can have dozens of implementations across a couple of projects - each as correct as the others, some abstracted, some inlined. Above a certain proficiency level, programmers are expected to intelligently recognize leftPad when they see it, even if it's called `frobnicate` and is implemented backwards (whatever that would look like). How can you expect programmers to do this without them going through a large set of sample implementations? Are they going to wake up some day to realize they got enlightened and now have no problems with dealing with leftPad in any of its many forms? I find the argument of "increased cognitive load" entirely unconvincing. Yes, the code should be optimized for reading. But, as every writer knows, how you write depends on who are you addressing. In other words, it's both insulting and counterproductive to write your code as if your readers are bird-brains with severely damaged hippocampus. Your readers are professional programmers who know their craft - possibly better than you do - so have a little faith in them!