“The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that." (page 34) When I was first learning programming, it was my understanding that functions should be used whenever you have a piece of code that you will reuse. If you aren’t going to reuse it, it doesn’t need to be a function. However, this overlooks an important feature of functions: their names. Even if a function is only used once, even if doesn’t return anything, even if it doesn’t take parameters, it’s still useful to take a block of code and name it according to its intent. Does this lead to a lot of functions? Maybe. So what? It’s easier to read and maintain.
Functions shouldn’t have a lot of parameters. A bunch of ‘out’ or ‘ref’ parameters is usually a clear sign that maybe another class should be created. A function with one parameter is called a monad. A function with two parameters is called a dyad. A function with three parameters is called a triad. A function with four or more parameters is called epic fail.
This chapter is a very good one, with lots of great guidelines for writing functions, and a lot of the stuff in this chapter can also be applied to objects & systems (as I’ve read in later chapters).
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