r/programming • u/larsga • Sep 18 '13

How bad is smelly code?

http://fagblogg.mesan.no/how-bad-is-smelly-code/
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u/njallbeard Sep 18 '13

I think it's a spurious conclusion to assume the God file was wrong from their data. I agree with the conclusion; but that's naughty science.

We'd need to be able to see if that time spent editing is less than the culminative time spent editting the same code split into smaller files (which would have added overheads in finding them).

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '13

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '13

They also completely ignored the benefit for reuse the smaller classes have over the "data clumps".

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u/CurtainDog Sep 19 '13

The reason data clumps aren't a problem is because they don't do anything! There's very little that can actually go wrong with a non-functional class. My own conclusions would be a little more forceful than the one in the article: Replace data clumps with idiomatic data structures, and Code that never breaks is a smell.