We are being forced to use Spartan programming on a project, to everybody's dismay. So I get it, it makes the methods really short and it handles the simple cases first. But is it really worth the price of the code looking like something out of the Obfuscated C Code contest?
Can you see it being useful for something?
Many of the tenants of Spartan programming just seem like good practise to me. For example, keeping methods short, minimizing the scope of variables, minimizing the number of parameters to a method, or methods to a class, etc. These are all good things and exactly what you should be striving for.
But then there's stuff like minimizing character count, minimizing token counts, ternarization (seriously?), etc which really make no sense.
I think my main problem with it is exemplified by this quote:
But, spartan programming is more than just a technical coding style, in that is has a single underlying, unifying principle---minimalism and simplicity taken to extremes.
Anything "taken to extremes" rings alarm bells to me.
Now that looked disturbingly familiar. Even the minimizing on the tokens, although not taken to the extremes. I rather use fname than filename for example, out for output, x for the data input, n for counts, l for lengths and so on. lx would be length of x, ly length of y,... you get the drift.
Plus, as I often manipulate large datasets in scientific applications, I use the index facilities in R a lot. When I write out all those indices, the code hurts my eyes. So index becomes id, or even just i.
Even more, the specific loop structures in R (the apply family) often demands of function declaration within the apply call. In those cases I always use x,y,z,... These functions are often one or two lines, so it's clear where it's coming from, and it doesn't clutter the screen.
It's not a bad thing, as long as you have some naming conventions that are coherent through the complete code, and you supply comments to explain the more obscure variable names. In the end, it makes code more readible to me than a long train of camels hobbling over the screen.
Here's an article that discusses the benefits of spartan programming
http://ssdl-wiki.cs.technion.ac.il/wiki/index.php/SendAnEmail_case_study
This is an accentuation Compactness of the Cs.
No one cares about your code if it isn't correct.
If your code isn't complete (handles every case), then there are bugs.
If it isn't compact than you are wasting memory or clock cycles ( compiler optimizations aside )
Note the order here is paramount. The most Compact program is rarely correct. E.G.
void main() {
return 1;
}
void main(){return 1;}
Oct 29, 2018 at 5:36
Wow, I actually program like this, didn't know it had a name. I would say it benefits readability but more in a spatial way... meaning you don't get lost in a soup of code even if you have few lines that are kind of hard to read.
However, I'd say that when you get used to certain constructs you find your way easier in less time than at the very start.
