Video

The Wet Codebase

Dan Abramov · Deconstruct 2019 Free Intermediate

Premature abstraction is a sneaky form of debt that fast moving teams create while trying to be clean. Abramov tells the story of a DRY abstraction that slowly grew special cases until it strangled the codebase, and argues a bad abstraction is worse than a little duplication. It teaches you when not to tidy, which matters as much as when to.

  • A bad abstraction hurts more than some copy pasted code
  • Wait for a clear pattern before you abstract
  • Be willing to inline and delete an abstraction that went wrong
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The question it answers

  1. We ship fast but our codebase is turning into a mess. How much should a two-person startup care about tech debt?

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