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Simple code: Readability

Readability, understandability, two key incredients of great code. Easier said than done, right?

What one person finds easy to read and understand another one finds incomprehensible. This is especially true when programmers have different levels of understanding on various subjects e.g. object oriented vs. functional or Node.js vs. Java. Even though there are obvious differences between paradigms and programming ecosystems there are some common conventions and ways to lower the barrier.

Different approaches

It's natural that in programming things happen sequentally e.g. you can have a list of objects and you need to do various things to the list like filter some values out and count a sum of the remaining objects based on some property.

With the given list

const stories = [
  {name: "authentication", points: 43},
  {name: "profile page", points: 11},
  {name: "shopping cart", points: 24},
  {name: "shopping history", points: 15},
  {name: "landing page", points: 7}
]


One way to do that would something like this via for loop.

let sum = 0
for (let x of stories) {
  if (x.points > 12) {
    sum += x.points
  }
}
return sum


Another way to do it would via filter, map and reduce.

return stories.filter(x => x.points > 12).map(x => x.points).reduce((a, b) => a + b))

Now depending on the readers background they might both be understandable or just one of them could be.

When thinking of readability we can improve on those. We have JavaScript, so lets use the tools it provides, it's conventions and take the second approach as our base but try to make it easier to read and understand.

const interestingStories = stories.filter(story => story.points > 12)
const storyPoints = interestingStories.map(story => story.points)
const storyPointsSum = storyPoints.reduce((acc, points) => acc + points)
return storyPointsSum


What I did there was that I extracted each step to it's own variable with a meaningful name and within the lambdas of each operation I also renamed the variables to have meaningful names. To make better use of the language's features I'd still write this a bit differently, something along these lines.

return stories
  .map(story => story.points)
  .filter(point => point > 12)
  .reduce((accumulator, currentStoryPoints) => accumulator + currentStoryPoints)


With this approach I can minimize the number of variables by still keeping the code readable and understandable by using meaningful names within the lambdas so that the context stays in the short term memory of the reader.

Readability conventions

First convention, standard API

Take advantage of the languages basic functionality i.e. it's standard API. It should be a prequisite to work with a language to have some understanding of the standard API and to know where to find it's documentation when in doubt.

Second convention, naming

Second convention is naming. Name things meaningfully. It's way easier to read code that has good variable and function naming than a poorly named (See the post about naming).

Third convention, empty lines

Third convention to readability is to keep in mind the separation of things by adding empty lines between things.

Add empty lines between things to improve readablity. When I have a variable assignment that spreads to multiple lines I add a empty line after that assignment, it helps me to read the code.

val currentTime = LocalDateTime.now()
val currentTimeInNewYork = someAmazinglyTrulyReallyLongFunctionName(currentTime)
  .format(dateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(myTimeFormat))

val identifier = UUID.randomUUID()


I usually also add a empty line before the return clause just so that it's easier  to distinquish from the rest of the code.

Another place where I've started adding empty lines to during the past year or two is around logging calls. Why? I think that logging is something special, a special side effect. Whenever something is logged it should be done for a good reason and because it's special it should pop out from the rest of the code.

Ordering of things

I prefer to order things in a module/class/object by their visibility, first publicly visible functions/methods/variables and things with private visibilty after those because I find it easier when the public functions are the first thing when I open the file.

Some have other opinions on what the order things should be and each language has it's own conventions but the keys here are to group related things together and be consistent.

Summary

Readability of the code makes a big difference whether the code is understandable, simple and maintainable.

The next post will be the final post of the seriers where I'll be wrapping it all together.

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