My Stumble with the Jim Goode Way
Okay, so let me tell you about this thing I tried a while back. It’s related to this name, Jim Goode. Never met the guy, probably long gone, but I heard about his approach from this old engineer I used to work with years ago. This older fella, real character, he’d always grumble about modern code. He’d say, “Jim Goode used to build bridges, rock solid stuff. He always said, ‘Make it so simple a fool can understand it, because someday a fool will have to maintain it.’” Stuck with me, that did.
Fast forward a few years, I was on this project. Total mess. You know the type. Layers upon layers of abstractions, fancy design patterns everywhere, using every new feature the language offered. Looked impressive, I guess? But man, it was brittle. Things broke if you looked at them sideways. Debugging was a nightmare, took forever to trace anything. We were spending more time fixing bugs than adding features. It was frustrating.
I remembered what that old timer said about Jim Goode. Keep it simple. So, I decided to try it, just on one small piece I had to rework anyway. It was this data processing module, nothing too crazy, but the existing code was like a maze.
Here’s what I did, step-by-step:
- First thing, I just ripped out most of the fancy stuff. All those interfaces defining interfaces, factories spitting out other factories… gone. Felt good, honestly.
- Then, I rewrote the logic. Just plain, straightforward code. Simple loops, basic `if/else` statements. Nothing clever. If I needed to do something three times, I might’ve just written it out three times instead of crafting some super-reusable function for it, if that made it clearer in context.
- Variable names got really long and descriptive. Like, instead of `procData` or `d`, I used names like `customerRecordCurrentlyBeingProcessed`. Yeah, it’s more typing, but you instantly know what it is.
- Comments. Lots of them. Not just explaining what the code did, but why. “Doing this check here because Marketing needs this specific edge case handled,” that sort of thing.
Hitting Some Snags
Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. During code review, got some raised eyebrows. “This looks… really basic,” one junior guy said. Another commented, “Isn’t this violating DRY? You’ve got similar code blocks here and here.”
And yeah, they were right. It was basic. It maybe wasn’t perfectly DRY. But here’s the thing: when a bug popped up later (in a totally different part of the system that fed data into my module), finding the potential impact on my bit took minutes, not hours. You could just read it. No need to jump through fifteen files and mentally compile the whole execution path.
Writing it felt… slower. Less intellectually stimulating? You weren’t solving clever puzzles, just methodically laying out steps. It wasn’t flashy. But the result felt solid, dependable.
What Came Out of It
That little module I refactored? It just worked. Hardly ever had issues. When new people joined the team, they could pick up that part of the code relatively quickly. It wasn’t scary.
It made me think a lot about this chase for the “new hotness” in tech. We’re always grabbing the latest framework, the coolest paradigm. Sometimes, maybe we just need to focus on clarity. Like that whole thing about companies using Go, Java, C#, Scala, C++ all at once – sounds impressive, right? But maybe it just creates complexity and makes things harder to maintain overall. Sometimes, maybe just picking something solid and sticking with it, even if it’s “boring,” is better in the long run.
This “Jim Goode” philosophy, as I think of it now, isn’t about writing dumb code. It’s about writing maintainable code. Prioritizing the poor soul who has to fix it six months, or six years, down the line. It’s about robustness over perceived cleverness. I don’t apply it everywhere, sometimes you do need more complex solutions. But I definitely keep it in my back pocket now. It’s a good reminder to stop and think: “Am I making this clear, or just making it complicated?”