Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend
Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend
“Every line of code is written without reason, maintained out of weakness, and deleted by chance” Jean-Paul Sartre’s Programming in ANSI C. Every line of code written comes at a price: maintenance. To...
“Every line of code is written without reason, maintained out of weakness, and deleted by chance” Jean-Paul Sartre’s Programming in ANSI C
Is this a joke
or an AI hallucination? I'm pretty sure Sartre never wrote about programming in ANSI C.There is a book called "Programming in ANSI C" by E. Balagurusamy
I can only find other references to this quote from sites that are linking this article.
The article actually does date back to 2016 so it's not AI generated.
I should have tried a bit harder to search, the original quote by Sartre is:
"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."
Thanks for checking
TLDR;
My current project has mostly easy to delete code and not easy to extend. Why? Coz shit was copy-pasted 50 times. It’s not fun to work in this project.
Same thing on my project. Thousands of lines across a few dozen files copied 100+ times. At that point there's almost no going back with everything diverging so long ago.
Eh, not really then. If you have some behavior in those 50 copy/pastes that needs to be deleted, you've got to delete it 50 times. That's not easier at all.
Looks like it's too easy to delete. I click on the link and I get a not found exception
This is a classic piece, and I love the contradictions in the text. It encapsulates my feelings on good software and code that it almost becomes an art than a science.
Code that's easy to extend generally encourages creating related code that's easy to delete. These are very similar directives.
Some though are interesting. 🤔