But this gargantuan pile of garbage warns that it can not and should not be refactored and it is like the shuttle code (may their souls rest in peace), it is so solid and perfect as is. It is also written in the sacred language of Go.
So if these conditions are met, then yes above praises will be and must be sang.
The jazz music analogy implies that it breaks the rules, but do so artfully and intelligently -- that wouldn't necessarily be a valid defense for any old block of poorly engineered code.
Also, poorly engineered code is seldom irreducibily complex.
No. Most jazz, including by the jazz greats, just sounds plain terrible. The worst is jam sessions, where everyone steps over each other but it sounds not abysmal at times because they're in the same key.
- "It's the "jazz music" of software development."
- "...breaks all the "rules" but does so purposefully..."
- "this is irreducibly complex, and cannot be split into multiple files"
- "that smallness-of-file or smallness-of-function is not a target to shoot for"
I am wondering: can't all the above statements be said in defence of any poorly engineered, gargantuan single page code?