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Ask HN: What code do you consider as clean code?

• MattGaiser 5y ago
  > but there's always some common basis that everyone agrees on. I am really curious what this is because I have been with 4 organizations now and despite all doing things very differently, they insist that they are doing things according to "industry standard." I have even had a few cases of two senior devs reviewing my PR at the same time and going back and forth to tell me to revert what the other dev had me put in, with both coming from prestigious companies.
  • hamedb 5y ago
    for the "common basis" part I'm referring to commenting code/ using descriptive variable names/ breaking mega large files into smaller ones... things that developer do not agree on include choosing between (object-oriented, procedural or functional code) the debate of isolating small bits of code regardless of the paradigm used. how many "code components" can be created without making the follow references game so crazy that you can't even understand the code flow and where you even started reading the code. are small code duplicates really that bad or over componentizing is a bigger issue that tries to solve the first one? things like that... I didn't work for large company before so was wondering if you saw any consensus/ agreement patterns between senior developers in these type of debatable things especially when writing JS because of it's huge flexibility.
  • no-s 5y ago
    >> had a few cases of two senior devs reviewing my PR at the same time and going back and forth to tell me to revert what the other dev had me put in As a senior guy reviewing code I’ve asked for reversion of stuff i made the dev put in. On more than one occasion. Nobody’s perfect. I admit that after a few cases of that I realized I needed to rethink code reviews and became more mindful of distinguishing between things that really needed to change, things needing explanation, and things inspiring overzealous pedantry. Made code reviews much less time consuming.
• giorgioz 5y ago
  One of the first thing to pick up that it's likely agreed upon by everyone is to give meaningful names to variables: // GOOD let fullname = 'John Smith' // BAD let f = 'John Smith'
  • usrbinbash 5y ago
    Depends entirely on the context, ie. what's the scope of `fullname`. If this is a variable in a 20LOC func, f is completely sufficient, easier to type, easier to read. In the other extreme, names can also be too meaningful: ´ThingMessageRelayAdministratorMiddlewareComposer` or `storage_access_administrator_storageshelf_listview` are jacked full of meaning, and about as useful as a hammer without a handle.
    • alpaca128 5y ago
      Then one year later you have to play archeologist and figure out the hard way what `f` is used for. And I also find it much more difficult to write code like this in the first place because it forces me to memorize the purpose of every identifier. Not sure how "easier to type" is relevant - aside from Notepad pretty much every editor offers some completion feature. I'm definitely a fan of longer identifiers, though abbreviated where it makes sense and using short words where possible.
      • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        If you are basing off of mathematical notation, f g and h might make sense for identifiers for very generic functions, especially if tin are implementing the chain rule somehow. I would find more verbose names harder to read because the notation was already ingrained. Same for those who name their looping integers something other than i or j.
      • usrbinbash 5y ago
        > and figure out the hard way what `f` is used for. In a 20 LOC function, that takes me about a second, if that long. > aside from Notepad pretty much every editor offers some completion feature It's still easier to type `f` than `fi` + leadkey + N or whatever the editor uses. Bonus points if the first prediction is wrong, or ambivalent. And the more important reason is "easier to read", especially in long expressions; for e := getFirst(); e != nil; e.Next() is much easier to read than for currentElement := getFirst(); currentElement != nil; currentElement.Next() Finally, not only the name itself, but also it's length should convey meaning. If I see a variable like `currentElement` in my code, I immediately know that it probably lives beyond the scope it is defined in. If I see a variable named `c` I know that it is a short lived throwaway.
• gabrielsroka 5y ago
  Steve McConnell covers this in "Code Complete". Iirc, a lot of the book is based on actual research done, not anecdata. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Complete
  • hamedb 5y ago
    will take a look. but it seems it focuses a lot on TTD/unit testing and integration testing not my thing. I hate testing and never understood why they created this most complex todo list in the first place? just write what you are going to do it and don't worry no need to check everyday if the code still exist or not. why run an automated check every single day of the same code. not to mention the time wasted on mocking and creating fake data. sorry a bit off topic but I really hate tests! would need to understand why some still defend TTD...
• joshink1 5y ago
  I've enjoyed reading the Guacamole client code (JS): https://github.com/apache/guacamole-client/blob/master/guacamole-common-js/src/main/webapp/ https://github.com/apache/guacamole-client/blob/master/guaca... Clean and consistent formatting, detailed comments, sensible modularization -- and it works well
  • hamedb 5y ago
    oh thanks for giving a great example definitely well written code. been reading this https://github.com/apache/guacamole-client/blob/master/guacamole-common-js/src/main/webapp/modules/Client.js https://github.com/apache/guacamole-client/blob/master/guaca... don't you find that comments are taking a lot of space more than the actual code or do you think this is what a takes to avoid confusion. I found that single line comments are much better, compact and enough to explain what is happening as opposed to those multiline comments that take so much space.
    • joshink1 5y ago
      The multi-line comments follow JSDoc syntax, which many IDEs can parse to give the developer useful suggestions. https://jsdoc.app/about-getting-started.html https://jsdoc.app/about-getting-started.html