Could it be that best practices are designed to make sure mediocre programmers working together produce decent code?
After all, actual novice programmers write code similar to the best programmers except that it doesn't work.
Yes, it is, but the issue is that the industry should move away from the idea that software can be done in an assembly line. It is better to have a few highly qualified people capable of writing complex software than a thousand mediocre programers that use GoF patterns everywhere.
Nobody remembers what the original constraints are or if they even apply in their current situation, even if they are actually trying to solve the same problem, which they might not be.
I have a rough idea of "why OO?" but in practice, it can be pretty hard on things like certain kinds of scaling, projects that require a goodly amount of serialization/configurability and the like.
The backlash against "engineered" software definitely seems real, and I think that's great - questioning assumptions is critical - but I think a lot of the insinuations about peoples' motivations and talents are unnecessary and honestly kind of silly. Most of us are just trying to find ways to avoid issues we've seen become problems in other projects in the past, it's not some nefarious conspiracy against simple code.
This is just dogma. Every Python project in existence has 100% public fields. Some are disasters, some are beautiful. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Better than ugly, beautiful is.
Better then implicit, explicit is.
Better than complex, simple is.
Better than complicated, complex is.
Better than nested, flat is.
Better than dense, sparse is.
Counts, readability does.
Special enough to break the rules, special cases are not.
But beaten by practicality, purity is.
Silently passed, an error should never be.
Unless explicitly, is it silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, the temptation to guess, refuse you must.
One, preferably only one, way to do it, there should be.
Not obvious, it might be.
Better than never, is now.
But often better than right now, is never.
If hard to explain, bad it is.
If easy to explain, good it may be.
Namespaces are a honking good idea - more of them we should do!
That should be:
english.namespaces english.verbs.are english.articles.a american.english.vernacular.adjective.honking ...http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom...
That's the problem I have with people praising Zen of Python as if it means anything. It's like a bible you just pick the verse you like to justify your action even if it might conflict with other rules. Then you praise the whole thing for being so wise.
[1] I refer to "classic" PHP. No clue if anything PHP5+ fixed this, though I doubt that they would make such a breaking changed even across major revisions.
ISO C and POSIX also have a flat library namespace, together with the programs written on top. Yet, people write big applications and everything is cool. Another example is that every darned non-static file-scope identifier in the Linux kernel that isn't in a module is in the same global namespace.
Namespaces are uglifying and an idiotic solution in search of a problem. They amount to run-time cutting and pasting (one of the things which the article author is against). Because if you have some foo.bar.baz, often things are configured in the program so that just the short name baz is used in a given scope. So effectively the language is gluing together "foo.bar" and "baz" to resolve the unqualified reference. The result is that when you see "baz" in the code, you don't know which "baz" in what namespace that is.
The ISO C + POSIX solution is far better: read, fread, aio_read, open, fopen, sem_open, ...
You never set up a scope where "sem_" is implicit so that "open" means "sem_open".
Just use "sem_open" when you want "sem_open". Then I can put the cursor on it and get a man page in one keystroke.
Keep the prefixes short and sweet and everything is cool.
I was a big believer in namespaces 20 years ago when they started to be used in C++. I believed the spiel about it providing isolation for large scale projects. I don't believe it that much any more, because projects in un-namespaced C have gotten a lot larger since then, and the sky did not fall.
Scoping is the real solution. Componentize the software. Keep the component-private identifiers completely private. (For instance, if you're making shared libs, don't export any non-API symbols for dynamic linking at all.) Expose only API's with a well-considered naming scheme that is unlikely to clash with anything.
I'm talking about the heart of PHP which is stream processing. Why in the world would you destroy the notion of simply including other source files in order to wedge in this C++ centric notion of a namespace? Before "namespace" and "use", the idea was that all of the files included together can be treated as one large file, and sadly that conceptual simplicity has been lost.
Also the lost opportunity of having objects be associative arrays like Javascript, combined with namespacing, have convinced me that perhaps PHP should be forked to a language more in-line with its roots. I haven't tried Hack or PHP7 yet but I am apprehensive that they probably make things worse in their own ways.
I think of PHP as a not-just-write-only version of Perl, lacking the learning curve of Ruby, with far surpassed forgiveness and access to system APIs over Javascript/NodeJS. Which is why it's still my favorite language, even though the curators have been asleep at the wheel at the most basic levels.
There is a community move towards a standard namespacing with PHP-FIG. This is useful and we are seeing lots of progress on internals thanks to the work by the community.
Like a lot of things, PHP name spaces are or were a big mess. Lots of progress is being made to improve though I think a lot must remain.
I've thought about creating a project that packages up various categories in the stdlib into namespaces with consistent inputs and outputs. That would be nice but the process isn't a lot of fun.
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better then implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases are not special enough to break the rules.
But purity is beaten by practicality.
An error should never be silently passed.
Unless it is silenced explicitly.
You must refuse the temptation to guess in the face of ambiguity.
There should be one, preferably only one, way to do it.
It might not be obvious.
Now is better than never.
But never is often better than right now.
It is bad if it is hard to explain.
It may be good if it is easy to explain.
Namespaces are a honking good idea - we should do more of them!The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than right now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
In python you can go from attribute access to using a property (getter/setter) without breaking anything.
The same is not true in a language like Java where obj.foo is always a direct field access distinct from calling a method like obj.getFoo(), so going from public fields to getters is not backwards compatible and can be painful.
True, but that should be avoided if possible. Python 'properties' violate the principal of "explicit is better than implicit". Once you realize "Oops, I need an accessor function here", the lazy programmer says "Aww, grepping for all uses of .foo and replacing them with .getFoo() will take 20 minutes. Instead, I'll just redefine it as a property and no one will notice." If you care about quality, go the extra mile: make it clear to the people reading your code that a function is being called.
Properties are a kinda nice language feature, but they are so frequently misused that I think the language would have been better off without them. They encourage bad habits.
I use getters and setters, but still think you will waste more time arguing about this issue, than leaving it be and finding out you have to change them down the line.
Edit: also, especially for getters, I like my accessors to be simple accessors. Hiding too much code behind them can be unpleasantly surprising, so as they deviate further from accessors I like to rename them - e.g. CalculateXxxx rather than GetXxx. Fewer surprises. Given that, I potentially have an issue with continuing to call it GetXXX or SetXXX in the face of certain changes.
Using an IDE with an understanding of the language you have is even less painful. Having the IDE automatically refactor a public field to use getters and setters is a breeze with managed languages like Java and C#.
> And using public fields in a non trivial project is a sure receipt for disaster.
Ergo, all non trivial C projects are disasters? Well, maybe, but I disagree on the reasons.
Language enforced encapsulation is a useful tool, but some people take it to the deep end and assume that if their math library's 3D vector doesn't hide "float z;" in favor of "void set_z(float new_z);" and "float get_z() const;" (one of which will probably have a copy+paste bug because hey, more stupid boilerplate code), they'll have a sure receipt for disaster. Which I suspect you'd agree is nonsense - but would also follow from reading your words a little too literally.
In C, you might be able to do some magic, but in Java, you’ll need setters and getters there – you can’t even do final fields there.
Luckily, in C#, you can just use accessors, and maybe in Java with Lombok, too.
When you use abstractions, you get low coupling. But like everything in life, also this has a price: you may need an extra line of code to instantiate the abstraction and sometimes have to write an extra getter because it's not perfect yet. That's a fine price to pay unless go you use way too many abstractions and they are nested deeply. It may have some aesthetics but it can be hell to debug and overly complicated to extend code.
So that's why one must also focus on high cohesion. I really like the modern JavaScript way, the imports/requires are for low coupling and the build automation is for cohesion. Anyways, these things are best practices as well but not sure if the author took those into account... ;)
Since the domain requires a great deal of serialization, the interfaces are usually strings over that. In cases, it's even easier to just open a socket to the serialization interface.
So far, I'm able to pub/sub periodic data streams, but it'd be pretty easy to add "wake me when" operators and such.
It forces the use of one central table of names cross callbacks ( which can be grown dynamically ) but it's very, very nice to work with.
YMMV. The domain is instrumentation and industrial control, which just fits this pattern nicely. All use cases can and are specified as message sequences.
This way A, B, C (and many others) only depends on X, the delegator (which exposes a number of interfaces for practically everything), but X depends on everything and the kitchen sink, X contains no real functionality.
Why, though? Surely it's the programmers' job to access what they need and leave alone what the don't. As someone else said, Python has no concept of public/private and it works okay.
/rant
Anyways, yeah, just use your brain, insist on defined interfaces, and if something might be suboptimal, allow for it to be changed, and you'll be fine.
In that case, your lambda object is your strategy. One of the good points that the "Design Patterns" authors make and that everyone else ignores is that these patterns are names for recurring structures that pop up independently of implementation language and environment. Some silly functor object is one way of implementing the more abstract "Strategy" pattern. Your lambda is a better one in many cases. It's the same high-level concept.
Was it Steve Yegge who menationed the Perl community calling Design Patterns "FP for Java"?
https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/singleton-consider...
(define (make-counter n)
(lambda (c)
(set! n (+ n c))
n))
call/cc does not actually use the passed in function to determine how any action should be done. All it does is provide a capture of the current continuation as an argument. That's it. So it's not a strategy, it's just a HOF.
And semantically, a continuation is pretty much never a strategy.
As for make-counter not being higher-order, that's just not true. A higher-order function takes and/or returns a function. make-counter returns a function: it's higher-order.
Callcc can be implemented as a function, no continuation primitives needed. Haskell has examples in its libraries.
Lastly, regarding semantics, I see no difference between Strategy and a second-order HOF. Yes the scope of Strategy is supposed to much more limited, but I don't see value in this. I concede that others might do.
It also might be easy to include now, but your extension might complicate a new feature request. Or the new feature might complicate your previously simple extension. If it's still unused, don't be afraid to throw it away then either.
Obviously one doesn't want to go down the rabbit hole too early, but the other extreme is just as bad.
I am definitely a fan of not over engineering, but I'm more of a fan of thinking. Think about your problem and your use cases, and about your own ability to predict the future. If you can predict future changes with high probability, then go ahead and design for those. If you're not a domain expert, you probably can't predict the future at all (and you probably grossly underestimate how bad your predictions are), so you should stick to the bare minimum.
Having the taste to use the right approach for each job is what sets experience apart!
I love this.
"Perfection is reached, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Have to disagree a little on getters and setters though. They're tremendously useful as places to set breakpoints when debugging. Well, setters are, anyway; I guess it's rarer that I'll use a getter for that. Anyway, perhaps we can agree that the need for these is a design flaw in Java; C# has a better way.
In other words, the best code is the simplest code that works. It usually tends to be very flexible and extensible anyway, because there is so little of it that understanding it all and modifying it becomes easy. The most experienced programmers are the ones who can assess a problem and write code to capture its essence, and not waste time doing that which isn't necessary.
I've observed that there is a "spectrum of complexity" with two very distinct "styles" or "cultures" of software at either end; at one end, there is the side which heavily values simplicity and pragmatic design. Examples of these include most of the early UNIXes, as well as later developments like the BSD userland. The code is short, straightforward, and humble, aptly described by "novice code that happens to work".
At the other end, there's the culture and style of Enterprise Java and C#, where solving the simplest of problems turns into a huge "architected" application/framework/etc. with dozens of classes, design patterns, and liberal amounts of other bureaucratic indirection. The methodology also tends to be highly process-driven and rigid. I don't think it's a coincidence that the latter is heavily premised on and values "best practices" more than anything else.
Here's another one of the "rebellion" articles against "best practices": ttp://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/27
One good advice I found is to just plain ignore status quo, and follow common sense when the context demands it.
That doers happen, but usually in fewer cases than most intermediate programmers realize. Instead, they see cases where it is used for real (like winforms or Direct3D) and cargo cult it into all code they write.
And a lot, a lot, of my CS prof colleagues believe it is deeply important, for reasons most of them are unable to articulate, that in an intro CS1 class all instance variables be private and accessed only through getters and setters. This is actually baked into the College Board's course description for AP CS A, and a point or two (out of 80) often hinges on it in every exam, so it is near-universally taught in high-school level CS classes (in the US). Sigh.
Okay, College Board, I warned you...
smack
this is for the above.
smack
and this is for teaching CS poorly in general.
smack
and this is for making us all by overpriced graphing calculators, thus keeping demand high...
BTW, you don't need accessors even for public ABIs. stat(2), for example, doesn't need "accessors" for struct stat and it's been stable for decades. The same idea applies to Win32 core APIs.
People, think for yourselves! Don't just blindly do what some "Effective $Language" book tells you to do.
(For starters, stop blindly making getters and settings for data fields! Public access is okay! If you really need some kind of access logic, change the damn field name, and the compiler will tell you all the places you need to update.)