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What Are the Unwritten Rules of Deleting Code?

Posted by samzenpus on from the best-practices dept.

Press2ToContinue writes "I came across this page that asks the question, 'what are the unwritten rules of deleting code?' It made me realize that I have seen no references to generally-accepted best-practice documents regarding code modification, deletion, or rewrites. I would imagine Slashdot's have come across them if they exist. The answers may be somewhat language-dependent, but what best practices do Slashdot's use when they modify production code?"

2 of 384 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Revertable by gagol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When in doubt, comment out and document. I also like to keep a commented (disabled by comments) generic version of a function if I have to work a heavily optimised version. For future generations, and keep sanity when code is revisited.

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    Tomorrow is another day...
  2. Re:The more..... by Pieroxy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Once it's not in the file anymore it's out of your attention span. Leaving the code there for a revision or two allow anyone looking into the file to be instantly aware that something has happened very recently, which is usually what the person is looking for.

    Depending on your language, putting a "TODO" marker allows for easy and quick cleanup afterwards.

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    Write boring code, not shiny code!