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Re: [WIP] 'svn patch' should remove empty dirs

From: Julian Foad <julian.foad_at_wandisco.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:17:44 +0000

Neels J Hofmeyr wrote:
> Re is_dir_empty() comment: When I last created function comments starting
> with "Helper for..." I was told that that's not really the desired way to
> go. We should rather have descriptive names / concise docs, and we should
> design functions to be re-used for a particular purpose, rather than
> "hiding" code in specialised helper functions. I came to agree with that :)

It was probably me that said that. One of my pet theories is that it's
good to write a helper function, but any function is helpful to the
design and understanding of a structured system if and only if it has a
purpose and an interface that are understandable by itself, in terms of
some concepts about the domain it's working in. Thinking of a function
as "just a helper" can sometimes lead us to take a random portion of
code from the caller and forget about providing a clearly defined subset
of the caller's functionality which might later be useful to another
caller.

- Julian
Received on 2010-02-22 13:18:24 CET

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