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130 lines
5.7 KiB
130 lines
5.7 KiB
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a> |
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<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p> |
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<h1 class="post-title">When I Used PEP8 To Fuck Up Code</h1> |
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<span class="post-date"> |
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2016-07-19 |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/python/">#python</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/pep8/">#pep8</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/readability/">#readability</a> |
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<p>We "inherited" some Python code recently. Although another team was working on |
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it, we now should support it and keep it going. The previous team at least |
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tried to use Pylint and follow PEP8. And I say "tried" because their |
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<code>pylintrc</code> has a couple of exceptions and their PEP8 extended the |
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maximum column to 100.</p> |
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<span id="continue-reading"></span><div style="border:1px solid grey; margin:7px; padding: 7px"> |
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<p>Pylint exceptions are almost common case these days, specially in |
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a Django project. But plain, pure <code>pylintrc</code> exclusion without giving any |
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pointers on <em>why</em> you're adding that exception are dumb, IMHO. I had a |
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project were we decided to add pylint exceptions inside the code, but for |
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every exception there should be a comment preceeding it explaining the |
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reason for the exception ("the framework doesn't expose this directly", |
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"pylint can't see this variable, but it is there", "It's the common place |
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to name the variable this way" and so on).</p> |
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<p>Quick pause here 'cause I know a bunch of people will complain with a "But |
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monitors these days are very large and you don't need to focus on column 80; |
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we don't use CGA anymore, old person!". The thing about the maximum column at |
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80 is <em>not</em> about "being visible on every CGA" but actually a measure of |
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readability: If you speak shorter, concise sentences, people will get the idea |
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quickly; if you keep an stream of words non-stop without reaching a conclusion |
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and without any punctuation to keep the ideas flowing, you will end up with |
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something that it is easier to forget and which the central idea will be lost |
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(and I freaking hope you got what I just did). It's tiring to read a very long |
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sentence; it's easy to keep the context on a short sentence.</p> |
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<p>In the spirit of "proper" PEP8, I reformatted one of the failing tests |
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to follow the 80 column limit. And now the code looks like crap. And |
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I'll commit like that. It's not because I hate my coworkers, but to point out |
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that, because it's a pain to read, it means the structured of the code is too |
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complex. If someone comes and say "damn, this test is hard to read", I'll be |
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able to point that it is not the test that it is hard to read, but the code |
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that reached the point where its complexity is leaking to the test code; it is |
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now a good time to refactor this to simplify things and make them easier to |
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read.</p> |
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<p>Actually, the reason for it to fail is too damn fun and worth a proper blog |
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post about it. Stay tunned!</p> |
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<p>Not that we can simply stop working and fix the damn architecture of it, but we |
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can at least keep this beast around till everybody gets pissed and realize it |
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<em>desperately needs</em> a refactor.</p> |
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<p>Weird thing, people usually assume some countries are the center of bad code; |
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this baseline is coming from a "first world country" and, heck, it has one of |
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the worst designs I ever saw. I'll not name names here to protected the (maybe) |
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innocent. But in the second week of training, I realized this whole project |
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has, at least, 6 months of technical debt already.</p> |
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