[josephg]

Right. The problem I've seen way too much is modularizing code too early in its lifecycle. This mistake seems to happen a lot by smart programmers who are inexperienced.

The instinct seems to be that they want hinges in their code, so their code can adapt and be reusable between projects. But they don't actually know where the hinges should go, because they don't need them yet. So they just put hinges all over the place - even where hinges aren't useful. If the metaphor is confusing, I'm talking about things like making an interface around a class, when there's only one implementor of that interface anyway. Or breaking a complex function into small, "reusable" pieces spread over multiple files - except where those small pieces are only ever used by that one call stack anyway. (And where they aren't that semantically self contained.) The result is harder to follow code with no actual benefit. And the resulting code is almost always bigger and more complex, and thus harder to work with.

Usually code thats the easiest to refactor is code thats the easiest to understand. That means, small, dense, correct code, with a simple test suite. If you write code knowing that you can (and will refactor) later anyway, the result is almost always better software. You will come up with a better design after you know more about your problem domain. Plan for that, and set yourself up to take advantage of that knowledge later.

[deltasixeight]

> Right. The problem I've seen way too much is modularizing code too early in its lifecycle. This mistake seems to happen a lot by smart programmers who are inexperienced.

I don't see this as bad. Modularization protects against an uncertain future. Most code that's modularized is only used once and this Looks bad only because you haven't seen the alternative of what could have happened if code wasn't modularized.

Non modularized code is often designed wrong because of an uncertain future. Once the project is too far down the line, people just keep piling technical debt on top of the design flaw. Code is rarely rewritten until it's at a point where it's horrible than it takes a massive engineering effort to rewrite and even this rewrite could be wrong.

The alternative is code littered with modules that are used once. Which is better? Obviously the more modular code.

[josephg]

> Code is rarely rewritten until it's at a point where it's horrible than it takes a massive engineering effort to rewrite and even this rewrite could be wrong.

This is your problem, right here. Your instincts know when refractors and rewrites are appropriate. But if you live in a corporate culture where those things are never allowed to happen, of course you’re going to run into problems. Premature modularity is a poor man’s substitute for simple-then-refactor. It’s not a good process.

[deltasixeight]

>This is your problem, right here.

Nah. There's no problem here. This is the most common behavior in any place corporate or not. Humans resist change. However specifically for corporations, it is very very very rare for a company to allow a rewrite because of two reasons: First the company is often way to busy with creating features and solving problems then to do a code rewrite. Second it is in direct conflict with the bottom line. Business people don't see the necessity so there is huge resistance.

When a company allows a rewrite it's 99% of the time only to serve a new feature or fix a flaw that no longer can be ignored.

>Premature modularity is a poor man’s substitute for simple-then-refactor.

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim or is this just your opinion? Using words like "poor mans substitute" doesn't lend any credibility to your claim. For example I can say the opposite and we can go in circles forever: Writing unmodular code is a garbage technique only done by junior developers who can't abstract things and by a good number of senior developers who've never learned how to code properly in a modular way. These guys don't even understand the true meaning of a module.

See what I did there?

[josephg]

> There's no problem here. This is the most common behavior in any place corporate or not.

Its hard to say statements like that universally because it really depends on where you work (and have worked). There are plenty of places which make time to refactor along the way, in small and large ways. Its good engineering, and a healthy code base nets better long term outcomes for the business too. Business people care about the team's velocity (since programmers are expensive). And I'm disheartened you think its the norm but not all companies have MBAs telling software engineers how to do our jobs. (Eg, Google / Facebook / Netflix / Github / etc.)

> Do you have any evidence to back up your claim or is this just your opinion?

Its just my professional opinion, backed up by almost 30 years writing software at all sorts of companies and in all sorts of environments. But no, I wish we had quantitative evidence for this stuff. But there's a weird dearth of quantitative research around software engineering. We as an industry don't really know what we're doing yet. I'd love to read some studies on this stuff if you can find any.

But I'm very confident about what works best for me, from trying lots of things on solo projects. I'm way more productive when I throw something together quickly, iterate like mad on how it works internally, then tidy it up and modularize as I get more confident around the best way to structure the code. Whenever I modularize up front I basically always end up regretting my abstraction boundaries - and either have to rework them (which is expensive) or I leave them alone, and just ship vaguely mediocre code.

But if prematurely modularizing your code is the only way you can modularize anything at your workplace then - well, you do you. But I find that pretty sad.

[deltasixeight]

>universally because it really depends on where you work (and have worked). There are plenty of places which make time to refactor along the way, in small and large ways. Its good engineering, and a healthy code base nets better long term outcomes for the business too.

And I have worked in places where people know the exact formal definition of modularity and they modularize things correctly so such refactors never need to happen. I've worked and have experience in enough places to know that both a place where people understand true modularity and a place where people constantly refactor their designs on the regular are incredibly rare. My sample size is large enough for me to confidently say that your view point is highly highly inaccurate. Your experiences are in the minority of the minority along with the experience of working at any company that actually properly understands modularity. Understanding modularity is more of an individual thing.

The only time where I have been at a company that allows you to write shitty code and constantly refactor it are Big companies that have tons of low impact useless projects. Get on the project that is on the critical money path and all your luxuries of refactoring shitty code disappear because actual business realities influence the process.

>Whenever I modularize up front I basically always end up regretting my abstraction boundaries - and either have to rework them

This is because you lack knowledge about modularization and what should be a proper abstraction boundary. Almost know one knows what this properly is. You know the design pattern book by the GOF and every derivative book on that topic? Read it and then know that it's completely and utterly wrong. If you abstract things using traditional techniques and "art" and "experience" like this you ARE not making your code more modular.

>But if prematurely modularizing your code is the only way you can modularize anything at your workplace then - well, you do you. But I find that pretty sad.

You have a lot of confidence, and it's a subtle derogatory jab by saying your sad as if you're superior to me. Literally you're implying your sad that I can't rise to your level of "superiority." Get off your high horse. Have you ever thought of the possibility that you actually lack knowledge on something? That you've never actually properly abstracted things?