simplicity

Practice 27

Sort ’em Out

If I’m typing in some kind of collection literal, and if the order of the items doesn’t matter, then I’ll sort the items.

For example, TypeScript has enumerated types:

enum Purple {
  Eggplant,
  Lavender,
  Lilac,
  Mauve,
  Rebecca,
  Royal,
  Violet,
}

I often use hashes (dictionaries) to pass in options. I sort the keys:

circle(
  fill: RED,
  stroke: BLACK,
  text: "push me",
  x_pos: 231,
  y_pos: 34,
)

This is also a good candidate for alignment.

circle(
  fill:   RED,
  stroke: BLACK,
  text:   "push me",
  x_pos:  231,
  y_pos:  34,
)

You may never feel the need to use this technique. But, even so, look for times when you accidentally duplicate an item when adding it to an existing ...