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Comment by root_axis | Hacker News Reader

> The best way you can contribute to an open source project is to remove lines of code from it.

Deleting code doesn't necessarily mean you're making it simpler. Compressing a 5 line function into a snazzy 1-liner is almost certainly making the code worse, not better.

> Every line that you write costs people time.

This kind of mantra is how you end up with nested ternary expressions and tightly wound functional compositions in imperative languages.

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I don't think he meant compressing 5 lines of "normal code" into a one-liner. He meant, actually removing it. Maybe the logic it provides is not needed anymore, or you could do it somewhere else in a far more readable way (I'm thinking about abstraction levels)

Sure, and I think we can all agree that this type of refactoring is useful, but I have worked with many developers that really take this anti-LoC idea to heart and end up producing difficult to read code because they are so focused on finding the most terse way to express logic.

A favorite quip of mine is that I dislike Ruby because the entire community optimizes for one-liners.

Back in my days of writing Perl one liners were also kind of encouraged, because usually it would likely be more performant. At least thats what some instructors told us.

> Deleting code doesn't necessarily mean you're making it simpler. Compressing a 5 line function into a snazzy 1-liner is almost certainly making the code worse, not better.

What about using something like gofmt? That way you can't get rid of lines by just rearranging the code.

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