oliverdavies.uk/content/node.4297cfc8-623f-4d32-b353-5a441c2c632f.yml

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title:
  - value: |
      Writing readable code
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  - value: '2022-12-01T00:00:00+00:00'
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      <p>This week, I needed to investigate and fix a bug within some existing code.</p>

      <p>It's code written some time ago and not by anyone working on the team.</p>

      <p>The code wasn't very readable, so before I could fix the bug, I needed to figure out what the code was supposed to be doing.</p>

      <p>I started to write a list of things that would make the code easier to read and understand - no single-letter variable names, reduced levels of indentation and splitting some nested ternary operators to use separate return statements.</p>

      <p>I also watched a video of a conference talk titled "Writing code you won't hate tomorrow", which re-introduced me to Object Callisthenics.</p>

      <p>They are from "The ThoughtWorks Anthology" book and are some steps that include some of the points that I had written:</p>

      <ol>
      <li>Use only one level of indentation per method.</li>
      <li>Don’t use the else keyword.</li>
      <li>Wrap all primitives and strings.</li>
      <li>Use only one dot per line.</li>
      <li>Don’t abbreviate.</li>
      <li>Keep all entities small.</li>
      <li>Don’t use any classes with more than two instance variables.</li>
      <li>Use first-class collections.</li>
      <li>Don’t use any getters/setters/properties</li>
      </ol>

      <p>As well as the original book, there are numerous blog posts and videos on this topic.</p>

      <p>Why try some of them on the next code you write and see if it's easier to read and understand?</p>

              
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    processed: |
      <p>This week, I needed to investigate and fix a bug within some existing code.</p>

      <p>It's code written some time ago and not by anyone working on the team.</p>

      <p>The code wasn't very readable, so before I could fix the bug, I needed to figure out what the code was supposed to be doing.</p>

      <p>I started to write a list of things that would make the code easier to read and understand - no single-letter variable names, reduced levels of indentation and splitting some nested ternary operators to use separate return statements.</p>

      <p>I also watched a video of a conference talk titled "Writing code you won't hate tomorrow", which re-introduced me to Object Callisthenics.</p>

      <p>They are from "The ThoughtWorks Anthology" book and are some steps that include some of the points that I had written:</p>

      <ol>
      <li>Use only one level of indentation per method.</li>
      <li>Don’t use the else keyword.</li>
      <li>Wrap all primitives and strings.</li>
      <li>Use only one dot per line.</li>
      <li>Don’t abbreviate.</li>
      <li>Keep all entities small.</li>
      <li>Don’t use any classes with more than two instance variables.</li>
      <li>Use first-class collections.</li>
      <li>Don’t use any getters/setters/properties</li>
      </ol>

      <p>As well as the original book, there are numerous blog posts and videos on this topic.</p>

      <p>Why try some of them on the next code you write and see if it's easier to read and understand?</p>

              
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