Seeing that Uncle Bob is making a new version of Clean Code I decided to try and find this article about the original.

  • Kache@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    I really dislike code like that. Code like that tends to lie about what it says it does and have non-explicit interactions/dependencies.

    The only thing I can really be certain from that is:

      doAnything();
      if(doAnything2()) {
        doAnything3();
      }
    

    I.e. almost nothing at all because the abstractions aren’t useful.

      • Kache@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        All methods? Of course not. Just methods like these.

        • Kogasa@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          No, your argument is equally applicable to all methods. The idea that a method hides implementation details is not a real criticism, it’s just a basic fact.

          • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            These kind methods hide too much.

            Where can I find the commissions these methods calculated? Does extra commissions depend on the calculations of default commissions? Do I need to calculate default commissions before calling hasExtraCommisions? What happens if I calculate extra commissions if hasExtraCommisions return false?

            There are so many questions about this code that should be immediately obvious, but isn’t.

            • Kogasa@programming.dev
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              4 months ago

              What you’re saying is “descriptive method names aren’t a substitute for knowing how the code works.” That’s once again just a basic fact. It’s not “hiding,” it’s “organization.” Organization makes it easier to take a high level view of the code, it doesn’t preclude you from digging in at a lower level.

              • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                4 months ago

                What I’m saying is that it’s hiding too much of the control flow.

                Compare it with this code:

                public double calculateCommision(Sale sale, Contract contract) {
                    double defaultCommision = calculateDefaultCommision(sale);
                    double extraCommision = calculateExtraCommision(sale, contract);
                    return defaultCommision + extraCommision;
                }
                

                This is about the same number of lines, but it communicates so much more about the control flow. It gives us an idea which data is involved in the calculations, and where we can find the result of all the calculations. We can make assumptions that the functions inside are independent from each other, and that they’re probably not relying on side effects.

                This is also against clean code examples, because Uncle Bob seems to be allergic against function arguments and return values.

                • djnattyp@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  This is also against clean code examples, because Uncle Bob seems to be allergic against function arguments and return values.

                  I think this is your strawman version of “Clean Code”… not anything that’s actually in it…

                  I “like” some parts of your example more than the previous one, but a lot of this depends on where exactly in the whole program this method is - if this method is on a “Salesman” class - does it make sense to pass the “Contract” in? If there’s a Contract class available, why doesn’t the “calculateCommission” method exist on it?