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Travis Swicegood

Posts: 191
Nickname: tswicegood
Registered: Dec, 2008

Travis Swicegood is AppDev @ Ning and author of Pragmatic Version Control using Git
Timeless Way of Coding Posted: Jun 22, 2014 9:47 PM
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… we must begin by understanding that every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there.

The above quote is in the opening chapter of one of my favorite books of all time, The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. Alexander is famed in programming circles as the author of A Pattern Language which set the stage for programming design patterns some 40 years before the Gang of Four wrote the book.

The Timeless Way is the lesser known of his two-volume set. It sets up his pattern book by defining why patterns are important. It is a more thorough explanation of quality than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance without the personal account of a descent into madness and a focus on quality through the lens of architecture and places. It is on my list of must read books for anyone who takes themselves seriously as a programmer.

If you’ve ever had one of my code reviews, you’ve probably seen something like this:

All functions need two \n characters between them

Or this gem:

Syntax of 'key' : 'value' in dictionaries will raise a flag on pyflakes. Best to avoid.

Both of these are from a commit message this past week with some simple cleanup, code gardening if you will, on code. My change didn’t affect what the code did at all, but it did make sure that it was more idiomatic Python. Pythonistas pride themselves on a certain style so much that there is even a coined term for this: Pythonic.

The importance of these small changes is summed up in the opening quote from this post. To paraphrase:

Things keep happening the way they happen.

By focusing on producing clean, readable, simple, uncomplicated code, you create an environment where more clean, readable, simple, uncomplicated code can flourish.

Tools I Use

You can stop here if you’re not interested in specific tools, otherwise, here are a few things I use to help keep my code clean.

The editor I use the majority of the time is Sublime Text 3 (though I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Vim). I start with these language-specific settings in Python, which you can use by opening a .py file, then going to Sublime Text 3 > Preferences > Settings - More > Syntax Specific - User and copying this JSON blob into that file.

{
    "detect_indention": false,
    "extensions":
    [
        "py"
    ],
    "rulers":
    [
        72,
        80
    ],
    "tab_size": 4,
    "translate_tabs_to_space": true,
    "use_tab_stops": true
}

Beyond some basic settings that cause spaces instead of tabs to be used and setting the tab size correctly, the most important part of those settings is the rulers. There are two lines that are displayed at character 72 and 80 in every Python file I open.

Docblock comments in Python are supposed to be less than 72 characters. This allows the docblock to be displayed indented in Python’s built-in help and not wrap to the next line. I try hard to ensure all docblocks I write stop before I hit that mark. The second line at 80 characters shows the point where my Python code needs to stop.

I know many developers think that the 80-character limit is too limiting. “I have a big monitor” I hear you say. The optimal character length for a line of text is around 60 characters. Going much beyond that makes it harder for the human brain to process what it’s seeing without scanning back and forth. Plus, take your code and increase it so someone at a meet-up can see your code sitting 20 feet away from the screen, then see how your 120 characters look.

There’s an even more practical consideration when thinking about line length. Forcing this constraint on yourself causes you to think really hard about what is the most effective use of those characters. Is that line really best expressed with an 80 character string in the middle, or can that be hidden behind a variable? Do all of those and conditions in your if statement make your code more readable, or would an intent-revealing function help this code? Constraints, even annoying ones, can really help hone your code design skills.

Next up, I use the Python Flake8 Lint. This tool scans your code using pyflakes and flags errors for you. Out of the box, it can be a little annoying (especially when you’re learning pep8’s rules). It displays a pop-up when you save your file and tells you all the places your code has errors. This is really useful on your own projects, as it causes you to pay attention to make sure that your code doesn’t raise these errors. But when you’re working with other developer’s code, you might want to reduce the chattiness. You can tweak the settings under Preferences > Package Settings > Python Flake8 Lint > Settings - User. Here are the settings I use for it:

{
    // run flake8 lint on file saving
    "lint_on_save": true,
    // run flake8 lint on file loading
    "lint_on_load": true,

    // popup a dialog of detected conditions?
    "popup": false,

    // show a mark in the gutter on all lines with errors/warnings:
    // - "dot", "circle" or "bookmark" to show marks
    // - "" (empty string) to do not show marks
    "gutter_marks": "bookmark",
}

This adds a mark to the gutter on each line that has an error, suppresses the popup, and makes sure that pyflakes is run when I open a file so I can see the errors immediately. To see the actual error, I move my cursor to a line that’s marked and this plugin displays the error message in the status bar.

These might seem like draconian tools that get in the way of coding quickly. Coding fast and coding sloppy are not synonymous. Spend a little time working within these constraints and your fellow developers will thank you.

Plus, you’ll be making sure that the code you write helps to create a better codebase by increasing the quality of the patterns that keep happening there.

Read: Timeless Way of Coding

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