My thoughts on “bad code”
I&#x27;ve noticed what I&#x27;d term a &quot;post-modern&quot; sensibility towards code quality, where some of the often cited tenets of good code are being critiqued or questioned. Stuff like yes, you can have super large functions or super large files. Or yes, you can have repetitive code. Turns out a lot of this stuff doesn&#x27;t impact readability or in fact is more readable than the alternative. I&#x27;d much rather read one function top to bottom than have to jump into 7 nested function calls that are only called once. And I certainly don&#x27;t need the levels of abstraction that design patterns or Haskell typeclasses demand.<p>There&#x27;s a real danger in a well-intentioned clean code advocate. First, because there are no universal code principles. Maybe &quot;have it work&quot;, but even then, a lot of value has been gotten out of code that doesn&#x27;t work. And second, because it&#x27;s very easy to go from a good guideline to a dogma. All you need is a few people to misinterpret your guidelines. Heck, a lot of people haven&#x27;t even read the guidelines. They just parrot what someone else paraphrased on Twitter.