42 or 69
Depends on the function. Scientific functions should be 42 long, and for a couple of functions it should be 69. I don’t make the rules here.
I’ve heard the younger generation tends to prefer 21 or 67 long functions instead.
A function should be short enough that you can read and understand it.
Unless you’re using a language in which each function declaration has a performance or memory-usage penalty. Not an issue if your language compiles to machine code or WebAssembly, but interpreted languages like JavaScript do have such a penalty. In these cases, you may need to make your functions longer to avoid that penalty.
This is utter nonsense, except you proof with serious performance measurements that
- the extra function is slower
- this actually mattersI am admittedly a bit…emotional about not wasting memory. Growing up on a 486 with 4MB of RAM does that to you, I guess.
The extra function will only be slower if the compiler/interpreter doesn’t inline it, which most compilers/interpreters including JavaScript will, so it’s mostly just a memory-usage issue. But I have used rather simple interpreters that *don’t* inline functions, and one of them even came with a warning that function calls are slow!
Well, well, with JavaScript I think browser snd bloated web sites, where a good hand crafted extra function is the smallest if our problems.🤣
Sufficiently DRY. Beyond that its pedantry.
