this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming

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[–] TanakaAsuka@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mostly agree with this but more than shorter code I value readability, I would rather take 3 lines to be clear to any developer than use some obscure or easy to misunderstand structure to write it in 1.

[–] StudioLE@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yep. And three functions is better than one for legibility even if one would be fewer lines of code

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it really depends. Functions break up the visual flow, so if you need to look at multiple functions to visualize one conceptual process then it can be less efficient

[–] Buttons@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Yes. I learned this from Haskell. I like Haskell, but it has a lot of very granular functions.

Earlier comment said that breaking up 1 function into 3 improves readability? Well, if you really want readability then break it up into 30 functions using Haskell. Your single function with 25 lines will become 30 functions, so readable (/s).

In truth, there's a balance between the two. Breaking things up into function does have advantages, but, as you say, it makes it more likely that you'll have to jump around a lot to understand a single process.

[–] gornius@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I specifically have a rule that if at the current abstraction layer, a step is more than one function call/assignment - I'm creating another function for that.

[–] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

I think they didn't mean how you structure your code but actually precision.