Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

>I've been thinking about the notion of "reasoning locally" recently. Enabling local reasoning is the only way to scale software development past some number of lines or complexity. When reasoning locally, one only needs to understand a small subset, hundreds of lines, to safely make changes in programs comprising millions.

Have you never heard of the word of our lord and saviour oop, or functions? It's called encapsulation.

You might have learned it through prog langs as it is an embedded ideal




As another sibling comment pointed out there are many tools that enable local reasoning, encapsulation is one such tool.

I'm not claiming the idea is novel, just that I haven't encountered a name for it before.


I'm not saying that encapsulation is a tool for local reasoning, I'm saying they are the same concept.

How is the concept of local reasoning distinct from that of encapsulation?


I think most of us associate the word encapsulation with OOP nightmare code that spread mutable state across many small classes that often inherited from one another and hid the wrong state. Stateless and low state are the reaction to that. If you expand the term to include those aids to local reasoning then many more might agree with you.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: