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Cover image for Code Smell 54 - Anchor Boats
Maxi Contieri
Maxi Contieri

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at maximilianocontieri.com

Code Smell 54 - Anchor Boats

Code is there. Just in case. We might need it soon.

TD:LR; Don't leave code for future use.

Problems

  • Complexity

  • Coupling

Solutions

  1. Remove dead code.

  2. Leave covered and real tested code.

Sample Code

Wrong

<?

final class DatabaseQueryOptimizer {

  public function selectWithCriteria($tableName, $criteria) {
    //Make some optimizations manipulating criterias
  }

  private function sqlParserOptimization(SQLSentence $sqlSentence): SQLSentence {
    //Parse the SQL converting it to an string and then working with their nodes as strings and lots of regex
    //This was a very costly operation overcoming real SQL benefits.
    //But since we made too much work we decide to keep the code. 
  }  
}
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Right

<?

final class DatabaseQueryOptimizer {

  public function selectWithCriteria($tableName, $criteria) {
    //Make some optimizations manipulating criterias
  } 
}
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Detection

Using some mutation testing variants we can remove the dead code and see it test fails.

We need to have good coverage to rely on this solution.

Tags

  • YAGNI

Conclusion

Dead code is always a problem.

We can use modern development techniques like TDD to ensure all code is alive.

Also Known as

  • Speculative Generality

Relations

More info

Also Known as

  • Speculative Generality

Credits

Photo by Kris Mikael Krister on Unsplash

Thanks to @Apoorv Tyagi for pointing this out.


It is very hard to predict, especially the future.

Niels Bohr



This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

Last update: 2021/06/13

Latest comments (2)

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dakujem profile image
Andrej Rypo

Why "Anchor Boats"? 🤣
"Dead Code" was not catchy enough?

I like this series btw.

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mcsee profile image
Maxi Contieri

They are different smells. The name is not mine