Skip to main content

Simple code: Simplicity

Simplest solutions are usually the best solutions.

We as software developers work with hard problems and solve a lot of small problems every day. Solving a hard problem itself is a hard job. Though in my opinion it's not enough to solve a hard problem in any possible way but a hard problem should be solved with a simple solution. When a developer comes up with a simple solution to a hard problem then they can declare the problem solved.

First a disclaimer. Coming up with a simple solution to a hard problems is itself a very hard problem and takes a lot of time, effort and practice.

I've seen my share of "clever" solutions for hard problems and the problem with those is that usually the solution itself is so hard to understand that depending on the size of the problem it may take a developer from hours to days or even weeks to understand how that "clever" solution works. It's a rare occasion when a developer has come up with a simple solution to a hard problem. So simple that it needs to be read only once and it makes sense. I dare to say I've made a few of these solutions and I've also seen these from other developers but way less often than hard to understand solutions for hard problems.

So how does one come up with simple solutions to hard problems?
First step is to split the problem to smaller problems. How this works for me is that I try to identify smaller problem areas within the original problem. Once I have identified smaller problems I can usually find yet smaller problems to solve within those and I continue to do it until I have a plan, a set of tasks or small problems to solve. Usually I identify even more problems to solve once I start to work on them and I just add them to the list of small problems to solve. With this iterative process I can solve the problem one small piece at a time.

Splitting the problem to multiple smaller problems gives other benefits too. Each small problem can be tested individually and the big problem's tests work as acceptance tests for the whole set of small problems. Smaller problems are easier to solve and therefore the code is easier to write and when the code is easier to write it's easier to write readable code.

In a ideal situation the big problem would be solved by sequentially calling functions that solve a smaller problem within the problem space. In a way it could be thought like the solution to a problem can be solved by a function introduced in a interface. That interface is tested with a acceptance tests and it can be tested with mocks or spies to verify it calls the correct functions in correct order with correct parameters. The implementation of the interface is actually a series of function calls that each solve a portion of the problem. Each of those functions is tested with unit tests. Each of functions can be written as easily readable by keeping them small and naming the functions and things within those functions meaningfully. When a function is small and solves a single problem the solution is easy to define with immutable data structures or by avoiding mutating the variables. Also when each function works as it's own unit it's easier to isolate integration tests to those functions.

This is how simple solutions are crafted and this is how all the topics I have covered earlier are tied together to create simple, readable, verified and long lasting solutions to problems.

With all this tied up what started with a working title "My version of clean code" could also be simplified and after thinking about it more while writing these posts I decided to name the approach and conventions as "Simple code".

Popular posts from this blog

Simple code: Naming things

There are two hard things in programming and naming is one them. If you don't believe me ask Martin Fowler https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html . In this post I'll be covering some general conventions for naming things to improve readability and understandabilty of the code. There are lots of things that need a name in programming. Starting from higher abstractions to lower we need to name a project, API or library, we probably need to name the source code repository, when we get to the code we need to name our modules or packages, we give names to classes, objects, interfaces and in those we name our functions or methods and within those we name our variables. Overall a lot of things to name. TLDR; Basic rule There's a single basic convention to follow to achiveve better, more descriptive naming of things. Give it a meaningful name i.e. don't use shorthands like gen or single letter variables like a, x, z instead tell what it represents, what it does...

Sharing to help myself

It's been a while since my last post but I have a good excuse. I've been in a new customer project (well new for me) for two months now and have absorbed a lot of new information on the technology stack and the project itself. This time I'll be sharing a short post about sharing code and how it can help the one who's sharing the code. I'll be giving a real life example of how it happened to me. My story Back when I was implementing first version of my simple-todo REST-service I used Scala and Play framework for the service and specs2 for testing the implementation. Since then I've done a few other implementations of the service but I've continued to use specs2 as a testing framework. I wrote about my implementation and shared the post through various services and as a result someone forked my work and gave me some pointers on how I could improve my tests. That someone was Eric Torreborre  the man behind specs2 framework. I didn't take his ref...

Simple code: Immutability

Immutability is a special thing that in my mind deserves a short explanation and praise. If you're familiar with functional programming you surely recognice the concept of immutability because it's a key ingredient of the paradigm. In the world of object oriented programming it's not as used and as easy to use approach but there are ways to incorporate immutability to parts of the code and I strongly suggest you to do so. Quick intro to immutablity The basic idea of immutability is unchangeable data.  Lets take a example. We have a need to modify a object's property but because the object is immutable we can't just change value but instead we make a copy of the object and while making the copy we provide the new value for the copy. In code it looks something like this. val pencil = Product(name = "Pencil", category = "Office supply") val blackMarker = pencil.copy(name = "Black marker") The same idea can be applied in functions and metho...