{"id":56,"date":"2008-05-31T20:52:28","date_gmt":"2008-06-01T01:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/31\/links-less-code-is-better\/"},"modified":"2008-05-31T20:52:30","modified_gmt":"2008-06-01T01:52:30","slug":"links-less-code-is-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/31\/links-less-code-is-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Links: Less Code Is Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I happen to hold a hard-won minority opinion about code bases. In particular I believe, quite staunchly I might add, that the worst thing that can happen to a code base is size.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/steve-yegge.blogspot.com\/2007\/12\/codes-worst-enemy.html\">&#8211;Steve Yegge<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The fundamental nature of coding is that our task, as programmers, is to recognize that every decision we make is a trade-off. To be a master programmer is to understand the nature of these trade-offs, and be conscious of them in everything we write.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Now, remember, these dimensions are all in opposition to one another. You can spend a three days writing a routine which is really beautiful AND fast, so you&#8217;ve gotten two of your dimensions up, but you&#8217;ve spent THREE DAYS, so the &#8220;time spent coding&#8221; dimension is WAY down.<\/p>\n<p>So, when is this worth it? How do we make these decisions?<\/p>\n<p>The answer turns out to be very sane, very simple, and also the one nobody, ever, listens to:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;START WITH BREVITY. Increase the other dimensions AS REQUIRED BY TESTING.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wilshipley.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/pimp-my-code-part-14-be-inflexible.html\">&#8212; Wil Shipley<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I happen to hold a hard-won minority opinion about code bases. In particular I believe, quite staunchly I might add, that the worst thing that can happen to a code base is size. &#8211;Steve Yegge The fundamental nature of coding is that our task, as programmers, is to recognize that every decision we make is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-programming","category-quotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}