Re:Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)
by Tichy on Friday November 23, 2007 @05:56PM
(#83082)
A good argument might be chunking: the (average) human brain can keep only about six or seven chunks of information in short term memory.
A method with 20 lines of codes is roughly 20 chunks. Move some parts of those 20 lines into other functions, and you have created more effective chunks. Presumably, the brain has a much easier time understanding things it can actually keep in memory.
One idea is to create functions instead of comments, that is instead of writing "compute the rank" followed by some code, create and call a method computeRank().
A method with 20 lines of codes is roughly 20 chunks. Move some parts of those 20 lines into other functions, and you have created more effective chunks. Presumably, the brain has a much easier time understanding things it can actually keep in memory.
One idea is to create functions instead of comments, that is instead of writing "compute the rank" followed by some code, create and call a method computeRank().