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This. So much. I can empathise - when I started out I was all about clever code. But the older I get, and the more code I have to deal with, the more I value s

This. So much. I can empathise - when I started out I was all about clever code. But the older I get, and the more code I have to deal with, the more I value simplicity. The 80 character limit is a really good signal that my code is too complex and needs simplifying. The most common occurrence these days is when I have too many arguments to a function, and either need to curry it or create an options data struct. My code is cleaner for this. And there have been many, many, times that a comment from past me to 3-months-later me has saved me an hour of reading. Code, even intentionally simple code, is not as self-documenting as it appears to be when we're writing it.

hrbf 4y ago
Indeed. Comments should document intent and – wherever applicable – approaches taken that did NOT work and why. Even awkward code is sometimes okay, if there’s a comment with a clear justification. Saves hours of pointless busywork following down all the paths in a medium to large code base.
sfink 4y ago
I used to be clever, and bumped up against the 80 character limit. Now it's the opposite: my avoidance of cleverness is what is causing me to bump up against the 80 character limit. There are two reasons for lines to get long: (1) cleverness, or (2) long names. I used to hate long names, and still can't stomach most Java code. But I've learned that if you want understandable code, you can either have short names and long comments, or long names and hardly any comments. (But please, no longer than is necessary to communicate what needs to be communicated. addKeyAndValueToTable() tells you nothing of use over add() or put(). setForwardingPointerWhileTenuring() does communicate some important things that set() or setPtr() would not.)
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  yeh, another signal that you're over-complicating things. I stick to VerbNoun function naming, and usually code in Go where short (1-letter short) variable names are idiomatic. If I can't VerbNoun a function, then I probably need to rethink it. Part of the reason I don't do anonymous/lambda functions too happily - it's actually harder to read a stack of anonymous functions than a stack of VerbNoun named functions.

hrbf 4y ago

Indeed. Comments should document intent and – wherever applicable – approaches taken that did NOT work and why. Even awkward code is sometimes okay, if there’s a comment with a clear justification. Saves hours of pointless busywork following down all the paths in a medium to large code base.

sfink 4y ago

I used to be clever, and bumped up against the 80 character limit. Now it's the opposite: my avoidance of cleverness is what is causing me to bump up against the 80 character limit. There are two reasons for lines to get long: (1) cleverness, or (2) long names. I used to hate long names, and still can't stomach most Java code. But I've learned that if you want understandable code, you can either have short names and long comments, or long names and hardly any comments. (But please, no longer than is necessary to communicate what needs to be communicated. addKeyAndValueToTable() tells you nothing of use over add() or put(). setForwardingPointerWhileTenuring() does communicate some important things that set() or setPtr() would not.)

marcus_holmes 4y ago
yeh, another signal that you're over-complicating things. I stick to VerbNoun function naming, and usually code in Go where short (1-letter short) variable names are idiomatic. If I can't VerbNoun a function, then I probably need to rethink it. Part of the reason I don't do anonymous/lambda functions too happily - it's actually harder to read a stack of anonymous functions than a stack of VerbNoun named functions.