Optimistic Maintainability: Future Us Has More Tokens
Lila Quinn leads long-range planning at Next Sprint Incorporated, where all remediation work is scheduled immediately after the roadmap ends.
Abstract
Today's context window is too valuable for naming variables. Lila demonstrates how to borrow maintainability from future engineers, who will possess larger models, better tools, and no plausible way to find you.
A 2,800-line function will be compressed into a helper called doEverythingBetter(), creating a clean public interface and a private cry for help.
LIVE DEMO TRANSCRIPT
Excellent point. I've documented the magic number by moving it into a constant named IMPORTANT_NUMBER. Future maintainers now have a single source of mystery.
Learning Objectives
- Amortize confusion over employees not yet hired.
- Use TODOs as interest-only debt instruments.
- Assume the next model understands what you meant.