3.3 KiB
Code Style and Conventions
Just few things that have become important enough to write down. Apart from what is written here standard blah applies (ie RoboCop/Reek stuff).
Formatting
Line Length
While the days of 80 are over, too big steps seems difficult. I've settled on 90 (ish)
Brackets
While ruby allows the omission of brackets even with arguments, i try to avoid that because of readability. There may be an exception for an assignment, a single call with a single arg. Brackets without arguments look funny though.
Method length
Methods should not be more than 10 lines long. It points to bad design if they are, spaghetti code, lack of abstraction and delegation. This may seem extreme coming from other languages, and i admit it took me some years to see the light, but now it's pretty much that. Longer methods will have a very very hard time to get accepted in a pull request.
No of arguments
Methods taking over 4 arguments are dubious. Actually 4 is already borderline. If a method actually needs that much info, it is most likely that a class should be created to hold some of it.
Class length and size
On class length i am not rigid, but too large is a definitely a thing. More than 5-6 instance variables probably means the class is doing too much and should be split. Also a total loc of more than 200-250 or method count over 20 is not a good sign. Especially when combined with struct classes that just hold data and have too little functionality, this may represent problems in pull request.
Global and class variables
Global variables is one of the few design mistakes in ruby. They just should not exist, meaning they should not be used.
Use class variables only if you are sure you understand their scoping, specifically the difference between class variables and class instance variables. Lean towards class instance variables.
Since classes (and thus modules) are global, class and module methods are global. Use sparingly with good insight, as it ties the usage to the definition and oo benefits like inheritance are lost.
Code style
Module functions are global
Often one thinks so much in classes that classes get what are basically global functions. Global functions are usually meant for a module, so module scope is fitting.
A perfect example are singleton accessors. These are often found clumsily on the classes but the code reads much nicer when they are on the module.
Code generators
Instead of SlotToReg.new( register, index , register) we use Risc.slot_to_reg( name , name , name). All names are resolved to registers, or index via Type. More readable code less repetition. As the example shows, in this case the module function name should be the instruction class name.
Singletons should hang off the module (not the class), eg Parfait.object_space
Naming
Naming must be one of the most important and difficult things in programming. Spend some time to find good, descriptive names. In the days of auto-complete, short cryptic names are not acceptable any more.
When naming, remember to name what something does (or is), not how. A classic misnomer is the ruby Hash, which tells us how it is implemented (ie by hashing), but not it's function. In Smalltalk this was called a Dictionary, which is tells us what it's for, to look something up (with real-world reference, double points).