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Jan Samohyl Posts: 14 Nickname: asgard Registered: Feb, 2008 Re: The Principles of Good Programming Posted: Aug 2, 2011 2:58 AM Reply Advertisement > DRY - Don’t repeat yourself - This is probably the single most fundamental tenet in programming is to avoid repetition. I disagree with this claim. DRY is not a fundamental tenet in programming at all. I think people wish it were, but it isn't. Look at mainstream programming languages. There is very little of actual support for DRY. The languages that supports DRY principle the most are probably Common Lisp with its macro system, Forth with its immediate words and Haskell with its higher order functions. Java/C++/C# don't even come close. And as you can see from adoption rate of Lisp, Forth and Haskell, DRY has also its disadvantages (worse readability?). So no, DRY is not that important as it is made to be; though I certainly wish it were, because I like Common Lisp and Forth (I don't know much about Haskell, and have reservations about the purity of functions).

James Watson Posts: 2024 Nickname: watson Registered: Sep, 2005 Re: I think Open/Closed Principle has issues too Posted: Aug 4, 2011 12:49 PM Reply > > What YAGNI says is: If you're writing software for > > an 8-bit camera, don't write 16 bit algorithms. > > But that's the idea I don't agree with. > The point was that I spent the extra time to develop > templated code so that I didn't write 8 and 16 bit > image algorithms, I wrote one algorithm that worked > for any bit depth. And if the algorithm needed updating > then it was updated for all image types. Writing for just > 8 bit depth would have been short-sighted and dumb. While there is something to YAGNI (I'll wager that we all have worked with over-designed systems), I agree strongly with John that blindly following this is stupid. Where I work, we are building the Nth version of a large number of systems. We have to do this because of the brittleness of the previous implementations. So when we are building say a fundamental web service specification, we already have a pretty good idea what it needs to support. Basically, the business we are in hasn't changed and we needed to have a certain functionality 5 out of the last 5 times we've done it. It makes no sense for us to pretend like we don't know we will need it the 6th time but the people who walk in off the street talking about stuff like YAGNI don't have that background information. Certain aspects of system design are extremely costly to add in later. For example, how fault-tolerance is implemented can fundamentally change the approach of a system. The best analogy I can think of is that when you build a house, you better think ahead before you lay the foundation. Obviously, software isn't a house but there are ways to paint yourself into a corner when building software. A good example of this was a system I heard about where all dollar amounts were stored in 16 bit ints. They were smart enough not to use floats but didn't create/use a special money type or anything (YAGNI). But then, a potential customer wanted to use the system to sell big ticket items like airplanes and they lost out on a big contract. A little bit of forethought can go a long way. It just needs to be balanced. The more experience you have the more likely your foresight will pay off and the less you need to blindly adhere to YAGNI.

Vincent O'Sullivan Posts: 724 Nickname: vincent Registered: Nov, 2002 Re: I think Open/Closed Principle has issues too Posted: Aug 4, 2011 1:17 PM Reply It's probably better to describe these aspects of coding as aspirations rather than principles. Calling them principles gives them the veneer of being rules that must be followed. In the worst case keeping to the rules becomes as important as delivering the customer requirements, with any compromise then seen as a Bad Thing. Aspirations, on the other hand, are things that have to be aimed for, rather than hit. Seen that way, they are a Good Thing. Not meeting them is not seen as a failure, and compromise and balance is built in to their working.

James Watson Posts: 2024 Nickname: watson Registered: Sep, 2005 Re: I think Open/Closed Principle has issues too Posted: Aug 4, 2011 5:28 PM Reply > It's probably better to describe these aspects of coding > as aspirations rather than principles. > Calling them principles gives them the veneer of being > g rules that must be followed. In the worst case keeping > to the rules becomes as important as delivering the > customer requirements, with any compromise then seen as a > Bad Thing. Aspirations, on the other hand, are > things that have to be aimed for, rather than hit. Seen > that way, they are a Good Thing. Not meeting them > is not seen as a failure, and compromise and balance is > built in to their working. I think the problem with a lot of these rules of thumb is that they are stated in terms that are subject to wildly different interpretations. All of these contain an essential truth but understanding what those truths are requires a breadth and depth of knowledge that the target audience does not have. For example, a lot of people might argue that the simplest thing that could possibly work is to eliminate all layers of abstraction. You would look at the code and know exactly what it does. Someone else would say that the simplest thing possible is to name all methods 'eval' and use polymorphism for everything. 'Simple' is inherently subjective and to make these things truly meaningful and useful to the beginner, you have to have a detailed explanation of what 'simple' means. I find these kinds of things can actually be detrimental for this reason.

Rudolf Pecinovský Posts: 1 Nickname: rudyment Registered: Jul, 2004 Re: The Principles of Good Programming Posted: Feb 9, 2012 10:29 AM Reply I thing you forgot one of most important principles: "Program to an 'interface', not an 'implementation'". Probably it is so natural to you that you forgot that many programmers have problems with its acceptance.

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