4 ms·
Simpler tools are a forcing function for simplicity. If you don't have code search, you'll need to write code that is legible without searching. If you don't ha
by bccdee 6mo ago
Simpler tools are a forcing function for simplicity. If you don't have code search, you'll need to write code that is legible without searching. If you don't have auto-refactoring utils, you'll have to be stricter about information-hiding. And if you don't have AI, you might hesitate to commit to the first thing you think of. You might go back to the drawing board in search of a deeper, simpler abstraction and end up reducing the size of your codebase instead of increasing it.
Conveniences sometimes make things more complicated in the long run, and I worry that code agents (the ultimate convenience) will lead to a sort of ultimate carelessness that makes our jobs harder.
- dijksterhuis 6mo ago> Simpler tools are a forcing function for simplicity. If you don't have code search, you'll need to write code that is legible without searching. i was working in a place that had a real tech debt laden system. it was an absolute horror show. an offshore dev, the “manager” guy and i were sitting in a zoom call and i was ranting about how over complicated and horrific the codebase was, using one component as a specific example. the offshore dev proceeded to use the JetBrains Ctrl + B keybind (jump to usages/definitions) to try and walk through how it all worked — “it’s really simple!” he said. after a while i got frustrated, and interrupted him to point out that he’d had to navigate across something like 4 different files, multiple different levels of class inheritance and i don’t know how many different methods on those classes just to explain one component of a system used by maybe 5 people. i used nano for a lot of that job. it forced me to be smarter by doing things simpler.