I call it "grep-resistant programming"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...

        /*
         * If the new process paused because it was
         * swapped out, set the stack level to the last call
         * to savu(u_ssav).  This means that the return
         * which is executed immediately after the call to aretu
         * actually returns from the last routine which did
         * the savu.
         *
         * You are not expected to understand this.
         */
        if(rp->p_flag&SSWAP) {
                rp->p_flag =& ~SSWAP;
                aretu(u.u_ssav);
        }

Reminds me of the quote “In Smalltalk, everything happens somewhere else “—Adele Goldberg.

I call these kinds of things, “action-at-a-distance,” or if I’m feeling snide, “COMEFROM code.” The thing is, action-at-a-distance is exactly what I want when I’m trying to separate concerns.

In Rails, for example, you can decorate a controller method using `before` at the top of a controller. To the person unfamiliar with the spell, this makes perfect sense:

  def index
    authenticate_current_user
    
    render something_or_other
  end

  before authenticate_current_user, only: [:index]

  # ...lots of code...

  def index
    render something_or_other
  end

It’s a win if we want to make our index method as simple as possible.

And that goes for all of Rails, really. The very idea of “convention over configuration” is a wholesale embrace of magic. In Ember:

  userService: service(),

There is, in fact, no way to find the code that does this unless somebody whispers in your ear that Ember does compile-time chicanery, and you aren’t really programming in JavaScript, you’re programming in Ember, a language that has a lot in common with JavaScript, and that compiles to JavaScript.

You can decide for yourself if this is a win. Lots of people like it.