The minimal example

This morning I wrote some code to show a colleague an example of a programming feature. The goal was to make it easier for my colleague to follow up.

Which means that my goal was to make sure the example was as simple as possible. It had to tell the right story, but no more than that.

And that calls for a kind of discipline. It’s sort of like the programming equivalent of a haiku.

Sometimes I get it really right, manage to strip off all the fat, and end up with the perfectly minimal yet expressive example. When that happens, it feels oddly satisfying.

Like writing a perfect haiku.

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