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Managed Chaos
Naresh Jain's Random Thoughts on Software Development and Adventure Sports
     
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Why are we Obsessed with Verbose Code?

I’ve come to believe that Code is a liability. The less of it we have, the better off we are. Since code is a liability, would you not take extra care to keep it minimal and simple?

However I keep running into code shown below. I still wonder what drives developers to write more code, when they can do away with a fraction of it?

public class Calendar {
	List<Integer> busySlots;
 
	public void addBusySlot(int i) {
		if(busySlots==null){
			busySlots=new ArrayList<Integer>();
		}
		busySlots.add(i);		
	}
 
	public boolean isFree(int time) {
		if(busySlots==null)
			return true;
		return (!(busySlots.contains(time)));
	}
}

vs.

public class Calendar {
	private final List<Integer> busySlots = new ArrayList<Integer>();
 
	public void addBusySlot(int time) {
		busySlots.add(time);		
	}
 
	public boolean isFree(int time) {
		return (!(busySlots.contains(time)));
	}
}

In fact I would argue that this is a Lazy Class and you can simply use the list directly where ever you need the Calendar.

Another example:

if(some_condition == true) {
    return true;
} else {
    return false;
}

vs.

return some_condition;

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