"Code smell" is especially ambiguous and annoying.
- "Anti-pattern" is also ambiguous, because patterns have some bad uses, and anti-patterns have some good uses.
- And "Considered harmful" is also ambiguous. To consider something harmful is not the same as it being harmful, you're just considering it.
These phrases are used automatically and intend to sound authoritative about something being bad, period, despite their historical nuance and ambiguity. And frankly they're all disgusting and annoying at this point.
They show the author is more into clichés and clickbait, than substance.
Like, I don't think you can get away with just typing "code smell" in a CR. That's lazy but the gut reaction to some code can be a useful starting point.
I guess that is why it’s a smell and not an anti pattern, but I work in a codebase with a lot of this kinda stuff and as much as I hate the complexity required to read it, I’ve been around long enough to know why all those ifs are there and even added a few myself.
how do you feel about the code smell of a tail-recursive fizz-buzz?
Otherwise, nope, I don't care that "I checked and it's optimised correctly". We do not write optimiser dependent code in my house, write something that won't explode messily when we change target or upgrade the tools or whatever and now it stack overflows.
Kidding aside, I'm more talking about the kinds of large procedures common to C++ codebases. These involve many sequential state changes which leave lots of opportunities for not initializing things and the like when the right set of conditions are met. The more paths available through this kind of code the more likely it becomes we'll create a bad one and fail to anticipate the conditions which trigger it.