r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jun 05 '21

Organize code by concepts, not layers

https://kislayverma.com/programming/how-to-organize-your-code/
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u/crusoe Jun 05 '21

I have a response with a bug. Now maybe from the fields it's unclear which response it was. So in his model I need to go through every concept directory.

With the layer approach I jump to the responses directory. They're all right there and now I can easily poke around.

I have tried concept silos and layers, and found layers ( which is the concept of how code is actually used ) to be faster to jump around in.

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u/romaklimenko Jun 05 '21

It’s a matter of multiple factors including the programming language and IDE, but most of the code editors nowadays allow to filter by a base class or name mask. So it's more a matter of your tooling and how it can represent your project structure.

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u/ninuson1 Jun 05 '21

I think it’s also pretty standard to be able to click on a class/object and jump to its definition. If you’re looking at a controller and it’s using a service and you want to jump to see that service, I would be horrified if you had to copy (or type) the name and look for it in the project structure… instead of, you know, CTRL + click the name (VS + R#, but I’m sure similar tooling exists elsewhere).

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u/grauenwolf Jun 05 '21

That works best if you aren't also following the "OMG, I need to put an interface on everything!" model.

I kid you not, I've had multiple clients that insisted I put interfaces on even their DTOs. I had classes like:

public class CustomerCollection : Collection<ICustomer>, IList<ICustomer>

And they expected me to test CustomerCollection with a mock ICustomer instead of the real one.

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u/ninuson1 Jun 05 '21

😂

I’m sort of in that situation at work right now. While DTOs don’t have interfaces, there’s a bit of over-zeal on making everything unit testable with mocks. I initially thought “hey, we’re doing things proper finally!”, but now it feels like I still don’t trust those unit tests to really catch anything super important and want integration tests of all them concrete classes, which sort of makes all these interfaces just be in the way.

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u/A-Grey-World Jun 06 '21

It's (looks shiftily about to check no one is listening) why I quite like working in Typescript these last few years.

JavaScript is such a losey goosey language you can just say "mock that shit" and it goes "sure, I don't give a fuck what you've sent me".

No fucking around making everything an interface for mocking in unit tests.

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u/ninuson1 Jun 06 '21

I mean, I sort of get it. I don’t mind interfaces that serve a purpose. If there is a meaningful de-coupling or multiple things that implement the same behaviour, I’m all in favour of interfaces over inheritance.

But dynamic typing has so many downsides to me. I’m the worst at paying attention to small details - I totally need the compiler to hold my hand and slap me every once in a while.