Hacker News Reader

Comment by autotune | Hacker News Reader

When you write "less code" I see "less readable" and therefore "less maintainable" and more that can go wrong. Less code should not be the goal.

View on HN

Don't confuse "less code" with "fewer characters and/or lines." Sure, you can write "less code" by implementing trickery in compact bitwise C operators (or, $DEITY forbid, writing a Perl one-liner.) But I've never seen the phrase "less code" to describe that situation.

I see "less code" used to mean that the solution has been distilled down to the essentials without fluff. For example, no need to write a full-featured JSON parsing library when a simple decode-to-native-dictionary will do. I don't have a good example for VPN-related code.

I've never seen the phrase "less code" used as a benefit to describe a code base as a benefit so something along the lines of an eye gouging Perl one-liner is what comes to mind. Using some existing module or library rather than building your own from scratch is absolutely something I would agree with.

Less code can also be the consequence of having less superfluous features.

Code is a liability.

Having a dead code base in 3 years because the author left and nobody else wants to decipher it and contribute back is a bigger liability.

The irony here is OpenVPN's code is terrible, unmaintainable and verbose while strongSwan is much better maintained. (OpenBSD's IPSec stack is on another level)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com