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Comment by kreeben | Hacker News Reader

I have trouble with you equating "leetcode style" with "one giant chapter" and also with you equating "enterprise code" with one chapter following another, because when I read enterprise code it's

1. read one line of first chapter,

2. then skip to the last sentence of the middle chapter,

3. then realize the first chapter was actually the penultimate,

4. then read the forth sentence of the first paragraph of the second chapter, bearing in mind what you have learned,

5. then throw your hands up in the air in dispair

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Jumping around is the nature of code in general, whether its in a 1000-line file or split up amongst multiple files.

For a maintenance programmer, they may already understand how everything works. They aren't following a particular code path, necessarily. Maybe they're working on a new feature and they need to re-familiarize themselves with previous chapters. It that case, it's nice to jump to a file that concerns itself with things grouped together.

>> things grouped nicely together

fixed it for ya :)

I'm a maintenance programmer. Even working layers of layers of layers above the actual shit does not make it not stink.

>> jumping around

...should be intuitive and joyful, not a disaster to your brain.

EDIT: I am a fan, though, of SOC. I guess enterprisey code tries to be that (but fails hard at it).

Okay, great. You are a maintenance programmer. You have a 1000-line program all in one file. You need to update the e-mail functionality of this program. You aren't following a stack trace or following a particular code path. There are 15 or 16 different e-mail related functions. How do you find the e-mail function you need to update? Do you memorize line numbers? Use regex search? Do you have vim marks setup?

>> here are 15 or 16 different e-mail related functions

Is this you showboating the greats of layered code?

Depth is not width and width is not depth, but surely you see the difference in the two?

If you have 15 or 15 different e-mail related functions spread across a whole bunch of files, how do you find the one you need to update?

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