alt Hacker NewsOf course, the rule of 3 is saying that you often _can't tell_ what the shared concept between different instances is until you have at least 3 examples.
It's not about copying identical code twice, it's about refactoring similar code into a shared function once you have enough examples to be able to see what the shared core is.
Replies
imajoredinecon • yesterday at 2:17 PM
3 just seems arbitrary in practice though. In my job we share code when it makes sense and don’t when it doesn’t, and that serves us just fine
But don’t let the rule of 3 be an excuse for you to not critically assess the abstract concepts that your program is operating upon and within.
I too often see junior engineers (and senior data scientists…) write code procedurally, with giant functions and many, many if statements, presumably because in their brain they’re thinking about “1st I do this if this, 2nd I do that if that, etc”.