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It really speaks to the state of software engineering when there are ample comments here defending this practice. This is virtually indefensible in my book, as

It really speaks to the state of software engineering when there are ample comments here defending this practice. This is virtually indefensible in my book, as it screams technical debt and strongly suggests that there are much deeper issues hiding in that codebase. Personally I would not be willing to work on it without first addressing those issues.

chillingeffect 5y ago
This more of a "rubber hits the road" than a theoretical forum. There is a time and a place fir stuff like this. It's not a reflection of the bigger picture of sw.
avar 5y ago
It speaks to the state of software engineering that people are complaining about file length, instead of something meaningful like cyclomatic complexity. A 10k single line program can be easier to understand and better organized than an overly abstracted mess strewn across multiple files, but which checks all the "best practice" checkboxes.
- dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
  Do you think the people who wrote this were measuring cyclomatic complexity? Obviously you can have >10k LOC file that is well-maintained and useful.. but there's ample evidence in the post that this was _not_ one of those, but a machine held together by duct tape, spit, and hope.
  - recursive 5y ago
    > Do you think the people who wrote this were measuring cyclomatic complexity? As a first-order guess, I would guess that no code has its cyclomatic complexity measured. As a fraction, I'm probably not too far off.
postalrat 5y ago
And that's fine. Nobody is qualified to work on every piece of software.
Handytinge 5y ago
I think the idea that optional extras are seen as required is more telling. I suspect there are a lot of younger programmers with these views, who don't know elsewise. Testing suites, having dedicated test/dev environments, all of these things are relatively new across most programming on the web. "Best practice" has changes more times than I can count in the last 20 years, and we've gone full circle from "monoliths are bad, split everything into microservices" to "maybe try combining them to reduce complexity". I'm not saying this style of coding is the best, but automatically assuming the current practices are the definitive best ones in all cases is silly, and the idea you have to refactor because it doesn't meet those practices is - in my view - insane and wasteful.

chillingeffect 5y ago

This more of a "rubber hits the road" than a theoretical forum. There is a time and a place fir stuff like this. It's not a reflection of the bigger picture of sw.

avar 5y ago

It speaks to the state of software engineering that people are complaining about file length, instead of something meaningful like cyclomatic complexity. A 10k single line program can be easier to understand and better organized than an overly abstracted mess strewn across multiple files, but which checks all the "best practice" checkboxes.

dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
Do you think the people who wrote this were measuring cyclomatic complexity? Obviously you can have >10k LOC file that is well-maintained and useful.. but there's ample evidence in the post that this was _not_ one of those, but a machine held together by duct tape, spit, and hope.
- recursive 5y ago
  > Do you think the people who wrote this were measuring cyclomatic complexity? As a first-order guess, I would guess that no code has its cyclomatic complexity measured. As a fraction, I'm probably not too far off.

postalrat 5y ago

And that's fine. Nobody is qualified to work on every piece of software.

Handytinge 5y ago

I think the idea that optional extras are seen as required is more telling. I suspect there are a lot of younger programmers with these views, who don't know elsewise. Testing suites, having dedicated test/dev environments, all of these things are relatively new across most programming on the web. "Best practice" has changes more times than I can count in the last 20 years, and we've gone full circle from "monoliths are bad, split everything into microservices" to "maybe try combining them to reduce complexity". I'm not saying this style of coding is the best, but automatically assuming the current practices are the definitive best ones in all cases is silly, and the idea you have to refactor because it doesn't meet those practices is - in my view - insane and wasteful.