Code Should be Simple – Not Hidden
I was talking to a couple of guys in The Group today and I heard a few guys talk about extracting the logging and timing metrics from the code itself, and have them be simply meta-programmed into Ruby such that all methods of a certain class would be logged and timed. Now I'm all for simplifications - to a point, but this is really, in my mind, going way too far. There's something about minimalism that I think is attractive to the Math types in a group, and we have them, but that's not at all realistic, as code needs to function in the real world, which means that it has to check inputs, log lots of intermediate state, and in general do all those things that rookie coders don't do and it gets them into trouble when their code doesn't perform well in production.
Simple is one thing. Hidden is another.
Don't hide the complexity of logging. It's in your face, and it's meant to be. There's no way some meta-programmed log system is going to know where I want to put every one of the log messages I want. Timings is a little easier, but it's still a mistaken assumption that simply timing method calls is sufficient as I'll never need to sub-divide a method call.
Fiddlesticks.
You need to have logging and timings sprinkled in your code. It's not homework coding, but I'm coming to believe that there's a lot to be said for the C++/Java world that I come from. Ye,s it's not Ruby, and there are a lot of things to like in Ruby, but there's a lot that I think these guys take for granted and don't properly write code to guard against.
Make code simple, yes. But if you hide too much, then you'll forget what's really being done, and you're going to get hit in the rear pretty soon. Performance is a huge blind spot for the majority of these guys. They just don't see it, and don't see it as needed. Couldn't be more wrong. It's always important in a production system.
So I'm going to try and guide them away from this decision, as I am a firm believer that it's going to get them, and me, into hot water. We just don't need it.