· 2 min read
Avoid creating god classes and long methods
Minimalism
As you gain experience as a developer you start to see repeating patterns that crop up over and over again in your solutions.
When you use chunking (design patterns, algorithms and standard functions) appropriately, it allows you to stop thinking about how the code you write does something and instead think about what it does
Source: Why Your Code Is So Hard to Understand
Classes
One class should do one thing not everything like StatusChanger or StatusManager, not StatusGod
Keep classes small, a 1000 line class is a pain
Methods
Name
Avoid using and in method names like validateAndSave, one method needs to do one thing and one thing well
Don’t Repeat Yourself
There should be one — and preferably only one — obvious way to do it.
~The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Lines of Code
Keep methods small, a 50 line method is a problem.
My rule of thumb is: The method should not be more than the size of my screen. (Source: Jeremy Howard fast.ai)
Passing variables
Keep the instance variables as low. If you are passing 4,5 variables you are probably doing more than one thing
Pass an object instead of multiple methods
Don’t pass the variables that you don’t need.
If creating an object requires multiple steps
Convert it into a factory method
Previous: Leave clues (Naming convention)
Next: Make database do the heavy lifting
Index: Tips on writing Clean Code