I hate the word ‘utility’. It says absolutely nothing. And yet, I come across it in so often when programming. It can take different guises too: ‘c...
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I have read multiple articles of this kind, where colleagues are blaming specific practices. I believe that the root problem here is that engineers do not work as owners of their projects. Every time a programmer touch a code base is an opportunity to improve code quality which is a hint for spotting junior developers.
A real senior developer should detect when the garbage is piling up and fix it. Even if management does not want to allocate time doing refactor. I would prefer to get fire for doing the correct things than blindly accepting all requests from management pretending that our codebase is healthy.
The rule of the boy scouts is: “Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it”.
Good luck with that if you have a family.
Be real, sometimes you will have time and sometimes no.
Part of the seniority is based on social skills that will convince management.
That is our duty as professionals. The best programmer I've ever worked with once told me every time product/management/client is taking the wrong decision and you let that happen, you are failing as a professional programmer.
Many colleagues do not think in this way but we should start to see this like a patient saying to the doctor they do not want this or that treatment because they do not like it. It is our responsibility to inform the people that pay our checks that they are going against their self-interests.
I think it's a nice ideal.
In practice, though, sometimes it takes too much time to achieve this.
Sometimes it's a battle that can't be won.
Sometimes you need the job more than you need to fight this fight.
And also, some people don't like having these kinds of conversations too, and that's fine.
Be a boy scout like Bob Martin
It is our code base, even tough we inherieted it
This is absolutely true. I just feel utils or shared code is a particular flavour of garbage I feel people are often blind to, or unaware of.
My question would be: say you hadn't added that single directory. Would the code have been in perfect shape a year later? From what you describe, I doubt it.
It absolutely wouldn't be. You're right. There's far more factors to it than I've put into this article - it's more than this one thing was an accelerant of sorts. A nasty trap I opened that all the engineers fell into.
Was it the only trap? No.
Will I be more aware of it in the future? Absolutely.
ahhh...yes... the util package. It's like the 'everything' drawer.
It really is. You look away for two minutes and it's full of flat batteries, pens that don't work and random scraps of paper.
Lovit !
I can almost see the shared floodgates
Here is my own opinion on "utils"
Code Smell 22 - Helpers
Maxi Contieri ・ Nov 12 ・ 1 min read
This is a great post. Thanks for sharing. Absolutely hits the same notes.
I've used the comparison to a standard library before when arguing against helpers or utils.
If you look at a programming languages standard library (e.g. golang.org/pkg/), everything has a clear point and purpose, there's no helpers or utils, and yet the code there is for the most reuse possible.
I don't see a problem with having a
utilsauxiliary package, as long as it's contents are properly organized and documented.