Where Pasta and Programming Meet

Is it a good sign when someone associates your code with a type of pasta?

The Pasta Theory is a popular analogy used to describe several types of anti-patterns as popular pasta dishes. In the culinary world, there is no such thing as "bad types of pasta". In the programming world though, you should keep your code away from pasta.

Great code isn't just about making the program work. Successful software development is about making sure your program will continue working. While creating code that's maintainable is one of the hardest parts of a programmer's job, it's also one of the most important objectives one should focus on. So, if your code is not maintainable, you can associate it with a type of pasta. The most popular dishes in your menu can be: spaghetti, lasagna, ravioli.

I wouldn’t mind some lasagna right now, but your program would mind being developed with a lasagna structure. This one is defined by having way too many layers and by being a little bit too abstract. Instead of a small range of larger classes, your program has a lot of small, unnecessary classes. How does this happen? As a developer, you might have the tendency to write it as if every subcomponent necessitates its own object. If your classes are very small, it’s time to take a step back and check if you’re over-abstracting your code. Even though your structure is understandable and it has a clear flow, it’s not a structure that easily welcomes changes. To modify something you’d have to go through all the other layers to assure no harm has been done to your program somewhere else in the code. An example here would be object-oriented code with a lot of small classes.

Don’t mess the culinary world with the programming world. Developing code that’s maintainable, reusable and durable is easier said than done, but you’ll thank yourself later for prioritising it. It would be great to have a recipe for developing durable code, but it varies from language to language, framework to framework, or team to team. What’s important to keep in mind is that today’s best coding practices can quickly become tomorrow’s anti-patterns. As long as you keep an eye on maintaining your code fresh, easily understandable, readable, and well documented, you’re on the right path.

Related posts:

Why do all of us love taking place a vacation? Since it is fun as well as exciting; a change of scene from the day-to-day regimen as well as time invested with liked ones. Whether you take a trip…

Before you go grabbing your dictionary to arm your arsenal of headache-inducing bogus vocabulary, the word “coddiwomple” is not in there. I love to read and recently came across this word in one of…

Dreams are made and dreams are broken. Life is like a riddle, my thoughts are stolen. Egger to climb the highest step of my dream ladder. Working hard day and night like a marathon runner. Need…