Unmaintainable code: Looks easy; should be done in half an hour I reckon (source)

No developer writes unmaintainable code on purpose, yet a lot of code is unmaintainable.

How does that happen?

Actually, most code start out easy, but over time it becomes harder to maintain, until it's unmaintainable.

Another, more recent cause of unmaintainable code is the rise of LLM generated code.

How to prevent unmaintainable code?

The best way to prevent unmaintainable code is to refactor it before it becomes unmaintainable.

Developers can make simple things complex, like unmaintainable code, but they are much better at making complex things simple. Refactoring makes complex code simple again.

But when to refactor? How much to refactor? What to refactor? That's where Code Limit comes in.

What is Code Limit?

Code Limit is a tool that can run in your build pipeline, as a pre-commit hook, or standalone, that tells you when it's time to refactor.

If you run Code Limit in your build pipeline or as a pre-commit hook, it only checks new or modified code, so even if you have a backlog of technical debt, you can start using Code Limit today.

See below how Code Limit runs on a popular Python repository called "rich" to extract a list of functions that need refactoring:

How to get started with Code Limit?

Try out Code Limit on your own code, check out the documentation to get started!

Leave your comments below to give your feedback on Code Limit. Does it improve your code quality? For what projects are you using it? Are you missing features?

Cover photo by Clément Hélardot on Unsplash