Object Mentor Blog: Code is a Liability

Code is a Liability

tottinger — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:10:00 -0500

I have thought for a long time that code is liability, and that viewing code as a liability has the power to transform our art. I read articles about code-as-a-corporate-asset and most of them are pretty good articles about wringing the value from the code you have, but I still feel that there’s something essentially wrong about it.

Programs are a great means to an end. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of having software and I’m greatly in favor of writing software. I think we would be in pretty poor shape without it. But I can’t call code an asset.

Functionality is clearly an asset. When we can inter-operate with various services (possibly even web services) our businesses produce more business results more quickly. We use software to control machines and to increase public safety in more ways than most of us know (talk to the guys who write the software that controls your car, the over-the-road trucks, forklifts, industrial robots, and aircraft). Software makes our life better and it’s a wonderful thing. I’m all in favor of software functionality and you have to write code to get it.

Our bosses and clients will pay good money to get the functionality they want, and they want it right now! If we could give them what they want without writing a line, it would be a tremendous win. If we could do it with one line or two lines of well-considered code, we would be heroes! Why is doing less so valuable if code is an asset? Clearly less code is better.

Sadly, most companies have to deal with heaping, shaggy mounds of code. Code takes up time and space. It has to be managed. It has to be versioned. It hast to be tracked, and planned. It has to be updated, and packaged, and revised. It needs backup to save us from having to reproduce it by hand. It has to be reviewed (hopefully in an efficient way like pairing). It often drives companies to expand staff and dedicate people to manage it (version control administrators, managers, build czars, consultants, contractors, metric-gathering tool specialists, etc).

Old code gets in the way of new code. Having more code will typically slow development, and will certainly reduce your ability to incorporate new programmers. Of course you’ll need more programmers because you have all this code to deal with. Size has a cost.

The problem doesn’t go away if you artificially reduce the code. Folding a lot of effects into few lines of code makes the code worse. Adding voluminous documentation makes the code worse. Moving it into metadata and models and other forms doesn’t make it any smaller, and often makes it worse. Hand-crafted code is almost always more readable, smaller, more optimal, more focused, more literary in its style than generated code or funky data tables. Since there has to be code, it might as well be the best code we can write. Coding well takes human beings who value minimalism.

It seems that the trick with the functionality/code game is in trying to maintain a positive balance.

We reach a point on some projects where we are producing a positive number of functions with a net loss in lines of code. That’s a wonderful time. We reduce the line count by simplifying the code and eliminating duplication. Sometimes we refactor our code into a more compact form and then only add a very few lines of code to produce a change. If code were an asset, then those moments would be failures instead of triumphs.

Code size reduction is a very good thing. I want the simplest, the smallest, the least code possible, with the least risk of breaking something else in the system. I don’t want big functions that touch everything in sight. I don’t want long complicated blocks of if/else statements. I don’t want monster functions which conglomerate dozens of operations in a single, fat interface. Shallow is good. Short is good. Less code is good. More code is a liability. This isn’t about typing less, it’s about owning less.

This is the point of view that makes test-first (TDD) so important. TDD/BDD has us encode the functionality (the asset) first, and then write minimal code to realize the specified feature. If code is a liability, and function is an asset, this is exactly the right way to do things.

And maybe, just maybe, it might explain why one might open-source less-important useful systems.

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Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:10:23 -0600

My first piece of advice is to make the functional parts of your code follow the principles discussed in most of the prior posts(i.e. less is more), and add to that heaps of mean, scary looking non-functional code to make sure that when they want something changed, they’ll come crawling back to you!

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Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:00:57 -0600

I’m sure you all know of someone who would actually be good at it but they just won’t look at it because they’re intimidated.

"Code is a Liability" by Rodrigo

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:55:16 -0600

I wrote a blog post around your comment that “The problem doesn’t go away if you artificially reduce the code.”

Would love to have your feedback on it!

http://blog.outsystems.com/aboutagility/2011/02/code-liability---how-to-reduce-your-risk.html

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Thu, 02 Dec 2010 03:01:58 -0600

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"Code is a Liability" by Andrew

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:51:34 -0600

What are you guys on about? Code is a massive asset. If it was as simple as typing: DoThatThing(Val As who_cares_because_the_compiler’s_so_clever_it_will_do_whatever_you_intended_anyway) then everyone from the director to the cleaner could do my job! Code is an asset because it scares people. I’m sure you all know of someone who would actually be good at it but they just won’t look at it because they’re intimidated.

Here’s a link to an article called “How To Write Unmaintainable Code”, which will help you to that end.

http://www.afralisp.net/vbaa/unmain.htm

My second piece of advice is not to take this post too seriously, but read that article for a good laugh, and even a lvaluable lesson in how not to do things…

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Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:26:46 -0500

...so that makes two of us. :)