Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Martin Vilcans<martin at librador.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:05 PM, kj<no.email at please.post> wrote:
>> I'm will be teaching a programming class to novices, and I've run
>> into a clear conflict between two of the principles I'd like to
>> teach: code clarity vs. code reuse.  I'd love your opinion about
>> it.
>
> In general, code clarity is more important than reusability.
> Unfortunately, many novice programmers have the opposite impression. I
> have seen too much convoluted code written by beginners who try to
> make the code generic. Writing simple, clear, to-the-point code is
> hard enough as it is, even when not aiming at making it reusable.
>
> If in the future you see an opportunity to reuse the code, then and
> only then is the time to make it generic.

Not just that, when you actually get to that point, making simple and
clear code generic is often easier than making
complicated-and-supposedly-generic code that little bit more generic
that you need.


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com