TL;DR

Another epiphany about coding discipline: get to something that actually works before generalizing it.

I’ve always been a fan of refactoring, to the point that I’m often inclined to factor instead of re-factor.

What I mean is that I think about doing something –let’s say the sum of two and three– and my brain immediately starts with generalization challenges, like what about summing any two integers? Why not numbers in general? Hey, what about complex numbers, or any possible field? Why are we considering sum only, and not any possible binary operation? You get the idea.

Result: I’m down a rabbit hole when I only needed to sum two and three, and I definitely hear five laughing somewhere out there.

So, in addition to premature optimization is the root of all evil, I’ll add premature generalization is pretty bad too. To some extent, a generalization can be seen as an optimization, so it’s nothing new right?

As a discipline, I’ll try to reach something working as soon as possible, and then consider if generalizing it makes sense or not. At least I will have something, shut the vicious five up and feel less frustrated!

Cheers!