4 ms·

I never understood many people's fixation with avoiding long functions/methods. I would much rather have that hook check long call stacks. I have never went "wt

by xorcist 12y ago

I never understood many people's fixation with avoiding long functions/methods. I would much rather have that hook check long call stacks. I have never went "wtf" as I dove into a new code base because of long functions, but I do it all the time when five levels of inheritance is used to provide all the magic necessary to "shield" me from whatever the code is actually doing.

Kevguy 12y ago
I definitely _have_ gone "wtf" when dealing with some long functions. A 380 line switch/case comes to mind. I have also had to deal with the 5 level deep inheritance that was equally difficult in its own way. Figuring out where to balance between length and depth is one of the more difficult parts of programming in my opinion. After many years maintaining my and other people's code, I do tend toward shorter methods. On the other hand, splitting up a method into several methods just to keep under a hard line limit causes more problems than it solves.
- xorcist 12y ago
  Sure, of course I prefer shorter code. But I'd much rather read a hundred straightforward lines than wrap my head around yet another abstraction (of which there are thousands in any non trivial codebase). I must disagree on the switch statement. A main loop with an rather large switch statement is a perfectly normal way to write a trivial interpreter. C provides a nice way of doing it, and as long as you declare your constants properly it's all perfectly readable. A lot of excellent code bases are structured that way. (Awk comes to mind, IIRC, and it's very easy to read and extend.)
lucidguppy2000 12y ago
Keep in mind - a function shouldn't contain more than one level of abstraction really. Having a 50+ line function, the code is telling you that you have a class in there struggling to get out. Also - you may be superior to others and able to understand a 50 line function. But what about your colleagues? The average cognitive limits of are well known. I doubt we will evolve to beyond these flaws in my lifetime.

by xorcist 12y ago

Kevguy 12y ago

I definitely _have_ gone "wtf" when dealing with some long functions. A 380 line switch/case comes to mind. I have also had to deal with the 5 level deep inheritance that was equally difficult in its own way. Figuring out where to balance between length and depth is one of the more difficult parts of programming in my opinion. After many years maintaining my and other people's code, I do tend toward shorter methods. On the other hand, splitting up a method into several methods just to keep under a hard line limit causes more problems than it solves.

xorcist 12y ago
Sure, of course I prefer shorter code. But I'd much rather read a hundred straightforward lines than wrap my head around yet another abstraction (of which there are thousands in any non trivial codebase). I must disagree on the switch statement. A main loop with an rather large switch statement is a perfectly normal way to write a trivial interpreter. C provides a nice way of doing it, and as long as you declare your constants properly it's all perfectly readable. A lot of excellent code bases are structured that way. (Awk comes to mind, IIRC, and it's very easy to read and extend.)

lucidguppy2000 12y ago

Keep in mind - a function shouldn't contain more than one level of abstraction really. Having a 50+ line function, the code is telling you that you have a class in there struggling to get out. Also - you may be superior to others and able to understand a 50 line function. But what about your colleagues? The average cognitive limits of are well known. I doubt we will evolve to beyond these flaws in my lifetime.