Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, 2nd Edition

8

Function Heuristics

What follows are some heuristics that I have found helpful in keeping my code clean. I don’t follow them as hard-and-fast rules, but when all else is equal, these are my biases.

Function Arguments

Every argument you add to a function signature makes that function harder to understand. The easiest argument list to understand is the empty argument list.

In the first edition of this book, this statement confused a number of people. Their complaint was that a function with an empty argument list can do little other than return a constant. So, apparently, some further explanation is needed.

In an object-oriented program, every ...