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It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code @ Things Of Interest (qntm.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You realize this is just an argument against methods?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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 1 points 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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You're making assumptions about the control flow in a hypothetical piece of code...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yes, because that's exactly what the thread is about. Making assumptions about control flow.