First 1-3 years of coding, I just coded to get sht done. I got a lot of sht done.
Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get the idea. It got to a point coding now felt like a burden and I started getting allergic reaction to any projects that had more than 50 files.
Next 4-5 years, I made it a mission to only code in a pragmatic, minimalistic way. Best decision I ever made, this have been the most productive time of my career. I don’t look back and never going back again. A simple require and requireAll with basic OOP is all I need on most cases. Most of my project now have less than 10 “core” files minus the standard views/routes/etc. I enjoy just working on code now it makes me happy and also any devs who joins loves it too as they get it right away. I code almost exclusively in Sinatra now btw. Express is great too but I think the ecosystem isn’t there yet for developer happiness.
Keeping code simple is not easy. It takes a lot of trials and errors to know what works and what doesn’t. I realize I code a lot slower now than in the past and that I write much fewer lines of code. It’s both good and bad because sometimes I’d even spend hours just trying to properly name a variable. But I believe this pays off at the end.
You just can’t best simplicity.
Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get the idea. It got to a point coding now felt like a burden and I started getting allergic reaction to any projects that had more than 50 files.
Next 4-5 years, I made it a mission to only code in a pragmatic, minimalistic way. Best decision I ever made, this have been the most productive time of my career. I don’t look back and never going back again. A simple require and requireAll with basic OOP is all I need on most cases. Most of my project now have less than 10 “core” files minus the standard views/routes/etc. I enjoy just working on code now it makes me happy and also any devs who joins loves it too as they get it right away. I code almost exclusively in Sinatra now btw. Express is great too but I think the ecosystem isn’t there yet for developer happiness.
Keeping code simple is not easy. It takes a lot of trials and errors to know what works and what doesn’t. I realize I code a lot slower now than in the past and that I write much fewer lines of code. It’s both good and bad because sometimes I’d even spend hours just trying to properly name a variable. But I believe this pays off at the end.
You just can’t best simplicity.