this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Programming

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19
How Long Should a Function Be? (And Why It’s the Wrong Question to Ask) (adamtornhill.substack.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by codeinabox@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 4 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

@codeinabox

A function should be short enough that you can read and understand it.

Unless you're using a language in which each function declaration has a performance or memory-usage penalty. Not an issue if your language compiles to machine code or WebAssembly, but interpreted languages like JavaScript do have such a penalty. In these cases, you may need to make your functions longer to avoid that penalty.

#programming

[–] HaraldKi@nrw.social 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

@argv_minus_one @codeinabox

This is utter nonsense, except you proof with serious performance measurements that
- the extra function is slower
- this actually matters

[–] argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

@HaraldKi

I am admittedly a bit…emotional about not wasting memory. Growing up on a 486 with 4MB of RAM does that to you, I guess.

The extra function will only be slower if the compiler/interpreter doesn't inline it, which most compilers/interpreters including JavaScript will, so it's mostly just a memory-usage issue. But I have used rather simple interpreters that *don't* inline functions, and one of them even came with a warning that function calls are slow!

@codeinabox

[–] HaraldKi@nrw.social 2 points 4 weeks ago

@argv_minus_one @codeinabox

Well, well, with JavaScript I think browser snd bloated web sites, where a good hand crafted extra function is the smallest if our problems.🤣

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

this sounds like a pretty bad reason to justify ugly code today

any readability gain will greatly outweight resources in most situations

[–] argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

@eager_eagle

That might have been a reasonable statement 3 years ago, but today there is a global crisis caused by extremely high RAM prices. Optimize your blasted code.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Agreed, optimize it. Where it matters. Reducing the number of functions to save space on the stack when the heap has 99% of the data is nonsense.

[–] argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

@eager_eagle

I'm talking about the *code* wasting memory. In JavaScript each function is a heap object and its source code is another heap object. Even if a JIT compiler inlines them, the original non-inlined functions keep sitting there wasting perfectly good bytes.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago

and again, you end up sacrificing readability to address what, a fraction of a percent in memory use? If that matters in your program, maybe don't use JS.

[–] AnalogHole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 weeks ago

Sufficiently DRY. Beyond that its pedantry.