it’s simpler and a lot easier for another engineer to look at and understand later, so they can verify that it’s right or change it if it’s wrong or we decide to do something a little bit different. it’s also been reviewed and tested by a lot of people working in a lot of cases that are all a little bit different from one another, so the odds that their code is correct are better than the odds that my code is correct, all other things being equal
Comment on xkcd #2867: DateTime
Jarix@lemmy.world 11 months agoSo how is the new thing different/better (other than less lines i guess?) If you dont me asking
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 11 months ago
hikaru755@feddit.de 11 months ago
It’s easier to understand, easier to review for correctness, and less likely to cause problems with additional changes in the future. Even though it sounds counterintuitive, software developers generally try to write as little code as possible. Any code you write is a potential liability that has to be maintained, so if you can instead just use code that others have already written and that has been tested, you’ll want to use that. (Note that “less code” doesn’t mean fewer lines of code, it means less logical complexity, which is often, but not always, also less in terms of characters/lines)
Jarix@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So like my english teacher taught me. Keep It Stupid Simple(though he would say keep it simple stupid to some people in class i am just realizing now 20+ years later)
hikaru755@feddit.de 11 months ago
Exactly that! KISS is an often cited rule among software devs.