Hacker News Reader

My experience exactly. I think the DRK (Don’t Repeat Knowledge) acronym (not my invention) is a better target. Too often people mistake similar structures of code as “repetition”.

Instead, if you focus on not repeating the important “knowledge” of your code (algorithms, business rules, etc), it’s easier to avoid the trap of over-abstracting.

View on HN

Agreed. I’m fine if you want to extract sub-parts of the function “generateId”, “hashX”, “lookupY” and have 2 functions that call 2 out of 3 (different 2) of the shared helpers/functions, just don’t create a single function that if/else’s the 2 paths.

Better put, if you have logic A, B, C, D and 2 code paths:

Code path 1: ABD

Code path 2: ACD

Then you should have:

Function 1: ABD

Function 2: ACD

Not

MegaFunction: A (if X then B) (if !X then C) D

Too many people see a common “A” and “D” and rush to have a common function that if/else’s the B/C.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com