When in doubt, turn to _why

http://judofyr.net/posts/when-in-doubt.html

by judofyr • 18 years ago

26 27 18 years ago

judofyr.net

smanek• 18 years ago

I don't know Ruby, but the author's comments suggest that why_'s way is more brittle, longer, and slower.

How is it better then?

judofyr• 18 years ago

It's not better, it's _awesomer_. I'm so tired of all this scalable, readable, fully tested code (which of course is good), that I find these small, wicked snippets so entertaining for the hacker part of my brain; and after all, this is the true reason I code: for fun.

jacobscott• 18 years ago

this kind of thing is good to write a blog post on, but when else is it useful? I think it is irresponsible to choose "_awesomer_" over "scalable, readable, fully tested" for anything that is supposed to be production quality (don't know the status of the particular project in question).

You may end up with non-scalable, unreadable, and/or untested code in a production system for a number of reasons. Some I can think of off the top of my head include performance and schedule pressure. Introducing it for fun sounds like bad news bears to me.

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

In our daily lives, we strive for quality in what we do. We cook aiming to make delicious food; we build to produce something durable and attractive. When I program, I aim to produce something of high quality: Performant, readable, simple, and reliable.

markessien• 18 years ago

Code should not look like that. Such code is too difficult to understand - even in C I've rarely seen such a mess.

The style of programming that in any way values a lot of weird unreadable characters is a relic of the past, and it is not in any way related to skill level or intelligence, as a lot of people seem to think.

Code should always be made as clear as possible first, and should only be made more obscure when performance is critical, and there is no clear way of writing the same block.

jon_dahl• 18 years ago

You're entirely right, of course. But I don't think Camping designed to be used for normal applications. Camping is Camping partly because its unusual and hacky. It's a little more like an experiment than a business solution.

bjclark3• 18 years ago

What?!? The "4k pocket full-of-gags web microframework" isn't the right choice for this financial transaction app I'm writing? I FEEL USED.

cubicle67• 18 years ago

There is no "code should". Code is just a medium; it is under no obligation to you.

I think sometimes developers forget about coding as a means of artistic expression. I love Ruby for pretty much the exact same reasons so many of you dislike it: It's an amazingly expressive language and code like this is nothing but art.

felixmar• 18 years ago

When in doubt, use a real parser instead of regexes (but perhaps i am spoiled by Haskell).

newt0311• 18 years ago

Damn right.

bk2• 18 years ago

I'm actually curious what a haskell version of this would look like.

shrughes3• 18 years ago

I'd be happy to write you an example if you specified more clearly than the linked website what the problem is.

jcl• 18 years ago

If you need a blog post explaining line-by-line how it works, it probably won't be very easy to maintain.

This was the first time I’ve ever heard of the merge block. It’s not even properly documented! But it’s a very simple and very powerful feature...

...doesn't inspire confidence. :)

bjclark3• 18 years ago

Totally agreed. Code must always be Enterprise Ready™. How could anyone possibly post about some different/interesting/witty way to do something?

palish• 18 years ago

That's not what he was saying. He's saying what he said, and nothing more.

bprater• 18 years ago

The problem with this article is that it doesn't immediate demonstrate, in code, what the problem is.

Here's an example of a nested hash: "XXX". Here's what normally happens in Rack: "XX". Here's what we want to happen: "XX". Here's a couple solutions.

Ding, now everyone is clearly on the same page, instead of reading the article twice trying to figure out what's going on.

GHFigs• 18 years ago

"Some do not understand Camping and lash out with spears reaching 4 to 6 feet in length."

Some context might help: http://redhanded.hobix.com/bits/campingAMicroframework.html http://github.com/why/camping/tree/master

When in doubt, turn to _why

Related Stories