[mehrdadn]

Awesome comment. One thing I want to point out to those reading is that the nursery thing is an instantiation of the more general principle of, if you're finding your code is getting convoluted, it's likely that you're missing a noun. I can't explain this as well as others have, so see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468796

[sametmax]

I just love this comment.

I'm going to steal it for my next training on how to design an API.

When you are a computer scientist, you want to think about your data structures so badly first. It fits your brain so well, and it's easier to understand a program from them than the rest of the code.

But it's a trap.

[mehrdadn]

Yes, PLEASE do!! :) I've been dying myself to get chances to teach these kinds of ideas! Hardly anyone seems to teach this kind of thoughtful analysis. Eric Lippert deserves an enormous amount of credit for writing this series in particular -- trying to explain these ideas coherently has been a massive struggle for me, let alone trickling them down to a small example that's easy to digest. He's a really awesome guy I look up to... I've learned so much from his writing (this is only one example of many).