• Buttons@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Shorter code is almost always better.

    Should you use a class? Should you use a Factory pattern or some other pattern? Should you reorganize your code? Whichever results in the least code is probably best.

    A nice thing about code length is it’s objective. We can argue all day about which design pattern makes more sense, but we can agree on which of two implementations is shorter.

    It takes a damn good abstraction to beat having shorter code.

    • Vince@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Here you go: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/

      But on a more serious note, I don’t really agree. Writing more code needs to be a conscious choice, but going for the shortest code too often creates a mess. I know, since I was that junior dev who just wanted to get stuff done and I would ignore project architecture in order to have to implement less, like accessing the database in GUI code.

      Shorter code with the same amount of coupling between components and with the same readability is always better though.

    • dzire187@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      i used to think like this. nowadays I prefer readability, and even debugability.

      sure, I could inline that expression, but if I assign it to a constant with a descriptive name instead, the next person reading that piece of code will not hate me.

    • TanakaAsuka@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I mostly agree with this but more than shorter code I value readability, I would rather take 3 lines to be clear to any developer than use some obscure or easy to misunderstand structure to write it in 1.