I don’t really get the hate he gets in the other comments. Are you all joking, or can someone elaborate? I always liked what I’ve read/heard of Bob.
I genuinely think his book is rubbish. I agree with some of his points. Most of the good points are common sense. For the most part I heavily disagree with the book.
Throughout the book he has examples of programs where he shows before and after he applies “clean code”, and in almost all examples it was better how it was before.
I can write a lot about why I don’t like his book. He doesn’t make many compelling arguments. It’s mostly based on what he feels is good. He often contradicts himself as well. If I remember correctly, he has a section about how side effects are bad. I agree with him on this part. Shortly after, he proudly shows an example of “clean” program - and it’s littered with awful side effects!
He also has this weird obsession of hiding the logic of the program. As a programmer, I want all relevant logic of a method to be neatly collected in one place - not scattered around deeply nested method calls.
I can go on and on. I hate this book with a passion.
I think it’s telling that none of his talks even make it all the way through his SOLID acronym, he sorta just trails off when he’s out of time.
His ideas were real big in the ruby community back when I was learning it, and if I ever go back that code is such a pain to work with. Almost impossible to follow the logic, inheritance everywhere, and I even thought metaprogramming was a good idea. Tests are the only reason that code has any reliability at all.
Now most of my code is procedural or functional, favors composition over inheritance, and is colocated as much as possible.
Fucking Ruby… Nothing is more confusing to me than seeing an error about a method not existing but the problem being that something was null/missing.
death by specificity is a thing…
HTTPServletRequest has a fuckton of methods but 90% of them could be eliminated if one treated the data as a simple fucking map instead of creating 4 methods for each key in every record of your schemas.
Sorry, I still don’t really get the hate.
Most of the good points are common sense.
I use what I learned from watching a talk by him on clean code and I had to learn some stuff. It might be “common sense” for experienced developers. But it certainly doesn’t come naturally that “functions should do one thing” to first time coders. The thought processes of when the software was developed usually isn’t the best way the code should be structured in the end. But that’s usually how beginners code.
It’s mostly based on what he feels is good.
In most diciplines, experience in the field is what makes the knowledge of the field. You don’t always have to be able to explain why good practice does what it does.
Also: I know of some examples, where he clearly explains his reasoning, e.g. why comments shouldn’t explain how the code works. (Because they’re not going to be updated, when the code will be)
As a programmer, I want all relevant logic of a method to be neatly collected in one place - not scattered around deeply nested method calls.
Either you misrepresent him, or you get a hard nope from me. Staying on one layer of abstraction is most likely my most important principle of writing understandable and maintainable code.
It’s mostly based on what he feels is good.
One of my main issues is, seeing his code in the past decade… It feels like this guy hasn’t coded in a collaborative environment in years.
His personal opinion tends to get on the way with code that’s easier to read from a team perspective. And “Uncle Bob” pushing that as the defacto way to code.
This happens from Influencer types who are so detached from the industry for decades and are no longer aligned with problems real engineers hit.
It’s not that he’s wrong. It’s that his perspective is outdated.
why comments shouldn’t explain how the code works
I categorize this as one of the better points of the book.
functions should do one thing
I kinda disagree with him on this point. I wouldn’t necessarily limit to one thing, but I think functions should preferably be minimal.
Throughout his examples he’s also using ideas like how functions should only be 3 lines long, preferably have no arguments, and also no return values.
This style of coding leads to programs that are nightmarish to work with. The relevant code you’re looking for might be 10 layers deep of function calls, but you don’t know where. You’re just jumping between functions that does barely nothing until you find the thing you’re looking for, and then you need to figure out how everything is connected together.
I prefer when things are flatter. This generally leads to more maintainable code as it’s immediately obvious what the code is doing and how everything is connected.
I think his book is the equivalent of a cleaning guide where all the steps are just to sweep all the mess under the carpet. It looks cleaner, but it’s not clean.
Which of these do you prefer?
A?
@Test
public void turnOnLoTempAlarmAtThreshold() throws Exception {
wayTooCold();
assertEquals(“HBchL”, hw.getState());
}
Or B?
@Test
public void turnOnLoTempAlarmAtThreashold() throws Exception {
hw.setTemp(WAY_TOO_COLD);
controller.tic();
assertTrue(hw.heaterState());
assertTrue(hw.blowerState());
assertFalse(hw.coolerState());
assertFalse(hw.hiTempAlarm());
assertTrue(hw.loTempAlarm());
}
Uncle Bob's Clean Code suggests
Option A
Regarding the experience thing, I’d like to point out that a lot of us have experience that says „clean code” is a real pain in the ass to work with and think through.
I’m not as much vitriol as others about Clean Code, but I will argue that engineers who preach the book as some sort of scripture are really obnoxious.
I love the Single Responsibility Principle, in theory.
What I don’t like is when devs try to refactor everything to that idea to achieve “Clean Code”. I’ve seen devs over-architect a solution, turning one function into many, because they don’t want to break that rule. Then point to this book as to WHY their code is now 20x longer than it needs to be.
It also doesn’t help that every recommendation about good programming books include this.
It’s like recommending a Fitness book from the 70s - information made sense at the time, but new research has made a lot of the advice questionable.
My main issue is the whole “Uncle Bob” persona. Robert C Martin is sexist and a racist, and has been uninvited by conferences. We don’t need that type of toxicity in the industry.
It’s a beginners book filled with a mix of bad and good advice, which takes considerable experience to separate the two. Those who can point out all the bad advice already don’t need the book, and newer developers will pick up absolutely atrocious coding advice. There’s simply better books that target beginners better, like The Pragmatic Programmer.
So when you are on-boarding junior devs that have bought into the clean code/SOLID dogma, you’re spending several months beating all their terrible coding habits out of them.
Personally I have been around longer than him but I used to like his stuff at first.
As I’ve coded more and more on stuff that is built not only on legacy code but specifically legacy code by coders influenced substantially by clean code… damn has this single author given me a headache like nothing else ever has.
The level of inane unmaintainability and complexity achieved by younger coders being encouraged or forced to code “clean” is remarkable.
personally I’d sum it up this way: it is usually enough to abstract two parts of your code: the repetitive stuff and the stuff that can be separated from external dependencies like db or network. That should be enough to ensure readability and that you can test it properly and not have to deal with rewriting half your codebase when you decide to change an external dependency.
Can you give examples? I genuinely can’t think of how the principles applied with proper restraint not to overdo it make code hard to maintain. But I’ve only watched his talk a few years ago - not the book.
There are a fair few examples in the book itself. https://qntm.org/clean
This is the article that convinced me to never read this book. https://qntm.org/clean
