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The Best Ways To Simplify Your Code? (dice.com)

Posted by timothy on from the throw-out-every-other-line dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes: Technical debt arises for many reasons—whether moving goal posts, pressure to get code tested and released, high programmer turnover, and lack of documentation. Over time, it can also render code a spaghetti-like mess. But how to deal with it? In a new column on Dice, developer David Bolton offers some suggestions, ranging from refactoring to using compiler inference to increase readability and shorten declarations. While those techniques are straightforward, it's clear that a lot of developers let their code get out of control, and trying to plan beforehand doesn't necessarily prevent the work from getting overcomplicated. It seems like every developer has a go-to technique (or four) for keeping things a little more streamlined. What are yours?

3 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Goto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    has a go-to technique

    How did they know my technique!?

  2. Re:Step 1 - Don't by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes this.

    It seems there is always that programmer that decides "I'm going to refactor this bit of code here to make it smaller, faster and cleaner". The actual result is things break (often not immediately) and it winds up taking up even more of said developers time as well as others that use or rely on that code.

    If someone says "I'm going to refactor this bit of code here to make it smaller, faster and cleaner", and they can not give a very good reason to the question "why?", don't let them do it.

  3. Re:I don't understand. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think what everybody is hating on is the undisclosed relationship. Nerval's Lobster is a shill account. This is not ethical business practice.