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chromatic (983)

chromatic
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Journal of chromatic (983)

Wednesday December 19, 2007
09:30 PM

Repetition-Driven Development

[ #35156 ]

Less code is not necessarily more readable (and it's often less maintainable). I much prefer

draw(Rectangle rect, Point point)

over

draw(rect, point)

Notwithstanding the fact that the former enables automatic refactoring and easy browsing while hardly anything can be deduced from the latter.

— a comment by Cedric Beust on his Continuous Tax

Read the examples carefully for a moment. Do you notice anything amusing? I'll give you a hint. How much more maintainable would the first example be with only one simple change?

draw(Rectangle rectangle, Point point)

There. That's much much better better. It almost doesn't need a comment.


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  • Of course that should really be

    drawRectangleAtPoint(Rectangle rectangle, Point point)
    "Draw" is such a vague name...
    • Or:

        rectangle.drawAt( point )

      • You must be a Perl hacker. The compiler can't enforce and your IDE can't infer anything about rectangle or point. What if someone accidentally passed in a BouncyBall? It's like the end of Watchmen all over again.

        • "Ok?"
          ^rectangle drawAt: point
          • Just meaning, I get a pretty awesome IDE in Smalltalk but all I can infer about rectangle is that it responds to the draw: method.

            • Smalltalk had an IDE? It's impossible to write an IDE for a dynamic language! Now Eclipse, that's an IDE.

              (Before anyone responds, ask yourself "Hey, why did he mention Eclipse and Smalltalk together?")

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