Re:The Economics of Clean Code
by Silhouette on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @04:06PM
(#22302848)
If a variable is declared at the beginning of a block, its use has to be audited throughout the entire block.
Well, if the variable is declared at the beginning of the block and is scoped to the entire block, we have two possibilities.
One is that the variable really is relevant throughout the block, or close to it. In that case, full mutability makes it more difficult to understand the behaviour, but if the variable is immutable or can only be mutated using explicitly controlled tools then the audit you mention is trivial.
The other is that the variable is only relevant to some relatively small part of the block. In that case, it is possible that the function is trying to do more than one thing and that part of it could beneficially be separated into its own function, taking any variables that are only relevant to that part with it. It is also possible that the variable is being declared prematurely and starting its lifetime earlier than necessary, in which case it may be better to move the declaration later so its lifetime is shorter and the area where it is in scope is reduced.
The latter cases do tend to lead to shorter functions, or at least reduced scopes, and for good reasons.
However, what you can't do is magically take a mutable variable that is genuinely relevant throughout some algorithm that really is complicated enough to require 200 lines of code to describe it, say the current state of some fundamentally complicated state machine, and make that complexity go away just by factoring out smaller functions. You're still going to have to pass the variable or some equivalent around, and you're still going to need to mutate the state in lots of places. But now your logic for doing so is scattered across 50 4-line functions, and to establish the true behaviour you don't just have to audit one of them, you have to audit them all and all the code that connects them.
Well, if the variable is declared at the beginning of the block and is scoped to the entire block, we have two possibilities.
One is that the variable really is relevant throughout the block, or close to it. In that case, full mutability makes it more difficult to understand the behaviour, but if the variable is immutable or can only be mutated using explicitly controlled tools then the audit you mention is trivial.
The other is that the variable is only relevant to some relatively small part of the block. In that case, it is possible that the function is trying to do more than one thing and that part of it could beneficially be separated into its own function, taking any variables that are only relevant to that part with it. It is also possible that the variable is being declared prematurely and starting its lifetime earlier than necessary, in which case it may be better to move the declaration later so its lifetime is shorter and the area where it is in scope is reduced.
The latter cases do tend to lead to shorter functions, or at least reduced scopes, and for good reasons.
However, what you can't do is magically take a mutable variable that is genuinely relevant throughout some algorithm that really is complicated enough to require 200 lines of code to describe it, say the current state of some fundamentally complicated state machine, and make that complexity go away just by factoring out smaller functions. You're still going to have to pass the variable or some equivalent around, and you're still going to need to mutate the state in lots of places. But now your logic for doing so is scattered across 50 4-line functions, and to establish the true behaviour you don't just have to audit one of them, you have to audit them all and all the code that connects them.