Last year (2015) I applied for a job at Google and while I didn’t get it, I learned one thing in the process. I had become overly reliant on tools. I actually did OK but I found myself in a situation where the code I’ve written in Google Docs didn’t really solve the problem and I had to troubleshoot the issue. The only problem here is that Google Docs is not a compiler, let alone a debugger.
With this in mind I’ve set out to rewire my brain by doing a project outside of my comfort zone. For this project, I’ve been using a simple text editor and a simple programming language.
Why C? Well, I’ve never really wholeheartedly tried it before. But mainly because I’m tired of all the buzz. C doesn’t really support fancy things. Instead, it functions as a constraint that you can push against to test your design. Any design which is simple can be written in C, no problem but it leaves me with more time to focus on problems not so much how to make my code elegant.
At every corner I’m now trying to get away with as little effort as possible. And it doesn’t mean I don’t take great care of how I do things, quite the opposite. I’m trying to be a lot more conscious about what I should be doing rather than letting the auto-pilot (refactor?) take over.
Another thing that I’ve found is that I’ve taken great care to write (mostly) short descriptive functions that do small things. I also try to keep things modular. And by this I simply mean minimize header dependencies. The implication of this is that I repeat myself. There are certainly several functions that are very similar and could probably be rolled into a singular general purpose function but if I did that I would just complicate things (except when the model is wrong) for the sake of code reuse. The fact is that the time it takes me to write a function is really short and I’m really trying to adhere to the open for extension, but closed for modification principle here. So, as requirements come up I don’t change stuff that is already written and tested. And yeah, I avoid encapsulation whenever it hurts my testing.
You can follow my progress here.
Oh, and happy new year!