Abstractions and Vacations
Abstraction can be hard to define, but I believe it is a very important skill for developers to hone. I wrote an article detailing my experience with abstraction on the Zaengle blog and here are a few of the high points:
Abstraction is a kind of organization accomplished by delegating responsibilities and information so that each segment isn’t overwhelmed or doing more than its fair share.
Another benefit of abstraction is the freedom it gives to change the internals of a section of code without the fear of breaking larger application logic. If feature A is given input and returns specific output, does it really matter what happens while the logic is inside feature A? That gives me the freedom to design and adjust over time.
Abstraction is a dangerous tool if wielded improperly. A bad abstraction can keep you hopping back and forth in a codebase, scratching your head saying, “Where does this thing happen?
Handling Complex Data Flows
In this post, written for the Zaengle blog, I explore some strategies for navigating multi-step flows. Separating the data from the logic helps make the process more manageable.
"At its core, programming is nothing more than stacking little blocks of logic on each other, building up a structure comprised of detailed organization, intentional design, and functional beauty. Unless those goals are held front and center it is only a matter of time before the system devolves into a convoluted mess of overlapping, overstepping, messy code."