I think even most people who believe in short functions, would disagree with your boss. The following SO thread does a pretty good job summarizing the short-functions principle.
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1334...
The whole point of a guideline is that it's not a rule. It's a heuristic that people can selectively apply, based on the specific context and their level of experience.
Re:Small functions considered harmful
by marcosdumay on Friday August 11, 2017 @12:38PM
(#14991618)
I haven't yet seen anybody pushing for "short functions" literally that didn't want a hardline on the largest function you should create. Thus, I haven't seen anybody explicitly using it as an heuristic instead of a rule.
People have all kind of heuristics that correlate with short functions, like DRY and single responsibility principle. People do apply those as heuristics. But function length is a number, and it is very hard to keep your conclusions fuzzy when operating over numbers.
As a maintanance programmer I had that misfortune very often. But I don't believe it's really so relevant to the article.
Having short-functions and DRYness is indeed prone to abuse, but it still works as a general guideline.
It doesn't, it's more of a heuristic and, as such, a way of detecting that you might be doing it wrong, not a sound rule to apply.
The problem is exactly that one: people that use "write short functions" as something that you must do. I've suffered such a fool as a boss and it was really sad. The man believed that two lines function (and the calling spagetti that followed) were a superior system to ten lines functions that accomplished a definite goal.
In general the problem is people that use general rules without understanding them.