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> with no detectable benefit to the user

Except the fact that the idioms and patterns used means that I can jump in and understand any part of the codebase, as I know it will be wired up and work the same as any other part.

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I think here “to the user” is referring to the end user, not the programmer (the user of the coding style). There is a comprehension benefit for the team working on the code, but there is no direct¹ benefit to the end user.

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[1] The indirect benefits of there possibly being a faster release cadence and/or fewer bugs, could also be for many other reasons.

But you could say the same about tests, documentation, CI, issue trackers or really any piece of technology used. So it's not a very interesting statement if so.

> tests, documentation, CI, issue trackers

Exactly. In many engineering camps, it's not unreasonable to say that almost all of this has no benefit to the end-user, even indirectly.

https://agilemanifesto.org/

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