Hardcoding logic when you're tight on time doesn't need to make a mess. You can build the abstraction first!
This is opposite of my usual advice: Sit back and wait for desire paths to form in your code. Because in engineering it always depends.
Use experience across projects
Lots of day-to-day engineering problems have known standard solutions. Or you've seen the same thing in other projects and solved it a million times in your career.
You know the desire path! You've seen it.
For example, I recently had to disable a feature for some users. The ask sounded a lot like an enterprise-level permissions system. But we had to get it done "by today".
How do you build a whole permission system in a few hours? You don't.
But you can hardcode a quick if user.email.endsWith('blah').
And now you've made a mess.
Minimize code that needs to know the details
Quickly hardcoding that condition works. It's fine.
But you know the desire path for user permissions. You've seen it across dozens of projects. What you really want is a function like if user.canDoTheThing().
With 5 seconds more effort, you can build the abstraction first and save yourself lots of hassle later on.
class User {
function canDoTheThing() {
return this.email.endsWith('blah')
}
}
Now you've got the beginnings of a permissions system. You can use this function anywhere in the code without knowing the details. Semantically this is what your code cares about: Can user do the thing?
Today it's hardcoded. Tomorrow the logic may become more complex. In 3 months it reads the database for details. In 6 months you build a whole UI to manage those details.
And all along this evolution, the code outside your function only knows user.canDoTheThing().
Cheers,
~Swizec
Continue reading about Build the abstraction first
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- Say no to abstract code
- Architecture is like a path in the woods
- Common abstraction traps
- How to think of your business logic as data
- How to use feature flags
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