Want cleaner code? Use the rule of six

Re:Want cleaner code? Use the rule of six by layer8 on Saturday September 24, 2022 @05:33PM (#32966716)

I’m all for IDEs for writing software, but not as a prerequisite for reading source code, because the latter happens in all kinds of different contexts. E.g. a software like GitLab shouldn’t require an integrated static analyzer for any or all programming languages. That would only increase the barrier to entry for all software that happens to display source code. If source code can’t be read and understood as-is anymore, that just impedes interoperability and universality of tooling.

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Re:Want cleaner code? Use the rule of six by twblalock on Saturday September 24, 2022 @05:56PM (#32966887)

Surely you must understand that the functionality provided by the tools will impact how the code is written, tested, reviewed, and deployed.

There is no ideal world where we can use tools to write code and it would be perfectly readable for people who don't use those tools.

Embrace the modern ecosystem, or build something better, or take a time machine back to the 1970s where there were no IDEs, source control, or CI/CD. Do you really think that would be better?

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Re:Want cleaner code? Use the rule of six by layer8 on Saturday September 24, 2022 @06:15PM (#32967022)

I disagree, because it reduces the freedom of choice and variety of tools available for software development, and increases the dependency on bespoke tooling. Using a more sophisticated word processor shouldn’t reduce the readability of the text produced. If anything, IDE features should be helping to increase the readability of the resulting source code, instead of promoting a coding style that decreases it.

This is about decoupling. The same way one should be able to freely pick a VCS and CI/CD system of choice, one should also be free to pick the IDE, or any other system concerned with source code, of choice. Those should remain loosely coupled, and should each be easy to replace. The more requirements you impose on how source code has to be marked up for intelligible display, the more you restrict the choice of tools it can usefully work with, and the more laborious it becomes to create new adequate tools in that field.

[ Parent | on HN ]