4 ms·

> Not written in the particular arbitrary style that I'm used to Like "arbitrary styles" such as "a function shall not be 500 lines long".

trade_unionist 6y ago
Arbitrary like don't use reflection when a dll will do.
Retric 6y ago
An individual function can quite reasonably be 500 lines long. A giant case statement handling routing is one example. More controversially, if I am gong to need to do a lot of ugly compatibility hacks then I prefer to consolidate them and thus keep most functions clean.
- awinder 6y ago
  Cyclomatic complexity is one of the more well-rigorously studied measure of code quality, I don’t know if I’d pick that hill to die on.
  - nemetroid 6y ago
    A function can be five hundred lines long without having high cyclomatic complexity.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Retric 6y ago
    The average size of functions is independent of the programs total cyclomatic complexity.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    It's rigorously studied but it's a crap thing to put an arbitrary restriction on, because it doesn't correlate well enough to warrent that. If you put a restriction on it, bad code still gets through fine while some good code gets made worse to bypass the checks (the biggest one is large switch statements acting as dispatch: Perfectly understandable, but if you split such a thing into multiple functions magically the cyclomatic complexity goes down to satisfy the linter but the code has just gotten harder to understand for static analysis and humans alike).
burfog 6y ago
John Carmack, the famous Id Software programmer, tried it out for a few thousand lines of space rocket code, and he liked it. He argues why giant huge functions can be good for maintainability: http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.html http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.htm... Previous HN discussions about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18959636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18959636

trade_unionist 6y ago

Arbitrary like don't use reflection when a dll will do.

Retric 6y ago

An individual function can quite reasonably be 500 lines long. A giant case statement handling routing is one example. More controversially, if I am gong to need to do a lot of ugly compatibility hacks then I prefer to consolidate them and thus keep most functions clean.

awinder 6y ago
Cyclomatic complexity is one of the more well-rigorously studied measure of code quality, I don’t know if I’d pick that hill to die on.
- nemetroid 6y ago
  A function can be five hundred lines long without having high cyclomatic complexity.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Retric 6y ago
  The average size of functions is independent of the programs total cyclomatic complexity.
- rcxdude 6y ago
  It's rigorously studied but it's a crap thing to put an arbitrary restriction on, because it doesn't correlate well enough to warrent that. If you put a restriction on it, bad code still gets through fine while some good code gets made worse to bypass the checks (the biggest one is large switch statements acting as dispatch: Perfectly understandable, but if you split such a thing into multiple functions magically the cyclomatic complexity goes down to satisfy the linter but the code has just gotten harder to understand for static analysis and humans alike).

burfog 6y ago

John Carmack, the famous Id Software programmer, tried it out for a few thousand lines of space rocket code, and he liked it. He argues why giant huge functions can be good for maintainability: http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.html http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.htm... Previous HN discussions about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18959636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18959636