[EllaMentry]

That is interesting, from a reread, I would say the "youngness" is a product of the length and over-descriptiveness.

""Magic" is my term for "I don't know how it works because I haven't taken the time to figure it out yet" - it's an attribute of my understanding of a thing, not of the thing itself; that is, it's the Clarkian definition." - No one speaks like that - it makes it sound like you are trying to come across smarter than you really are - Every developer under the sun understands what you mean when you say "Magic"

At it's most essential it sounds like you gobbled up a "software best practices book" and then spouted chapter titles without any context - Examples definitely help!

e.g. <Module Z> is a great example of why we need to keep our code clean, since I joined the team no fewer than X lines have been added resulting in this module having Y different responsibilities - because <Module Z> is so bloated we have Q different tickets in our backlog which will result in code changes to it.

<Module T> and <Module R> are a perfect example of where we can utilize code reuse. Both contain a function Y, which we make heavy use of - we should consider extracting this into a common library function etc. etc.

If you make an actual proposal instead of a complaint, people are more likely to listen - it is a lot harder to argue against raw data than it is a personal opinion.

[ThrowawayCoward]

Interesting. My description of magic is there because I specifically see two programming-related definitions.

When used with Rails, it's usually derogatory, and it means something like "something tricky or obscure and complex that is done in order to provide an easy interface", and in that sense, it is usually derogatory and used when the someone believes there is a straightforward way that may be an even easier interface, or is at worst, not much more cumbersome than the interface that is presented.

The other definition - the one I used, is, for example, how many developers would answer "How does the Linux syscall mechanism work?" In that case, the syscall interface is very much needed to provide an easy interface, and it's not incredibly complex.

One often seems like the other until you look into it, but I still think they are separate.