trust

The Danger of “Simplicity”
Nov 16, 2019 simplicity trust
There are a few tendencies among programmers that involve the totem of “simplicity.” There’s the ancient concept of KISS, of course, but there’s also the much-abused YAGNI, the insistence that we “Choose Boring Technology," entire languages that base their elevator pitch around the idea that they’re “simple,” and the concept in object-oriented design that “every class should have a single responsibility.” The problem with these approaches is that “simplicity” never gets a rigorous definition.

“Parsing” in Python
Nov 10, 2019 programming python trust types

I recently read “Parse, Don’t Validate,” shared it with my coworkers, and let it bring me out of retirement on lobste.rs. It captures a concept that I’ve struggled to explain, leading to cases where I couldn’t say why I thought something was better beyond a vague “It’s a matter of taste.” That’s not very satisfactory as a justification when you’re trying to explain to someone why they should rework a piece of code in a review.