Hacker News Reader

Comment by andybp85 | Hacker News Reader

for the codebase i work on, i made a rule that "functions do what the name says and nothing else". this way if the function does too much, hopefully you feel dumb typing it and realize you should break it up.

View on HN

Then what does the function that calls the split functions get called? foo_and_bar_and_qoo? And if they’re called only under some conditions?

It likely has some higher-level meaning other than just do foo, bar, qoo.

For example if you are calling functions "openDishwasher", "loadDishwasher", "closeDishwasher", "startDishwasher", your function should be called "washDishes". Not always that straightforward, but I believe in 95% it's not difficult to put a name on that. For the rest 5% you need to get creative, or maybe you realize that you didn't group the function calls well enough to have an atomic meaning.

Yeah, I agree in spirit but I think the answer is more ”it depends” than something where you should feel bad or something if you deviate from it. If washDishes also sends a bunch of metrics/diagnostics or updates a database of your favorite dish washing programs somewhere inside it, that’s probably fine. Otherwise you push the path of least resistance to just be vague instead, then you get a codebase full of functions with names like handle or process.

I have definitely been guilty of naming functions foo_thenBarSometimes. I wince whenever I write them, but I've never really regretted seeing them later on, even after years. So sometimes it really is a perfectly good name. Sometimes there are two related functions that are often called together and don't have a succinct label for the combined operation.

Some function can be named generally but the name is specific when concatenated with the module name and/or the package name. `load` is generic, but `app.config.load` is more descriptive.

I find an odd overlap between people who get incredulous about function decomposition and who think cracking open a thesaurus as an architectural exercise is stupid.

I have no idea what that’s about, but I think it has something to do with “white-knuckling”.

People name things and then miss boundary conditions that matter and would have been implied by finding a more accurate synonym. And also supplementary features that the better name suggests.

OrderAuthorsByNameAndCalculateResidualsAndSendPaperCheckWithThankYouCard()

I could see how that might come up in a retrospective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com