Comment by zahlman
3 days ago
> A prompt like " I want to make this change in the code where any logic deals with XXX. To be/do XXX instead/additionally/somelogicchange/whatever"
If I reached a point where I would find this helpful, I would take this as a sign that I have structured the code wrongly.
You would be right about the code but probably wrong about the you. I’ve done such requests to clean up code written over the years by dozens of other people copying patterns around because ship was king… until it wasn’t. (They worked quite well, btw.)
If you're generalizing "you" to all developers, perhaps.
I know how I'd respond based on personal experience.
sometimes you want a cutpoint for a refactor and only that refactor. And turns out that there is no nice abstraction that is useful beyond that refactor.
I knew someone would make this comment. I almost added a "I'm probably not leet enough to avoid these situations" disclaimer. It seemed a bit pointlessly self deprecating.
You don't always get to choose the state of or the way a system you work in/with is designed. In this case I was working in a limited scripting language that I have no choice about.
Keep that nose turned up. I'm sure you are leet10xninja. Maybe work on your reading comprehension before you dump on someone though as I already specified that I greatly simplified for comment sake.
No slight was intended. I've learned a lot of techniques; I don't consider this a matter of elitism. I have generally been fortunate to have control over the architecture of my projects; when I encounter something like this in someone else's code, I can at least raise my concern. Sometimes the code is that way because doing it the other obvious way would lead to some other inconvenience. Hence "a sign", not proof. It's worth investigating signs.