Code Smell 269 – Low-Level Addition

Don’t care how you do things. Care about what you do

TL;DR: Ditch the Loops: Write Cleaner Code with Declarative Style

Problems

Verbose logic
Repeated patterns
Readability
Maintainability

Solutions

Remove loops
Simplify logic
Write declarative and high-level code

Context

When summing a collection, you might manually loop through the elements and add each one to a variable.

This approach works but adds unnecessary lines of code and makes it harder to follow.

Using language high-level functions, you can make your code shorter, clearer, and less error-prone.

It tells you exactly what the code is doing and not how it is doing it.

Sample Code

Wrong

transaction_values = [10.0, -5.21, 101.32, 1.11, -0.38]
balance = 0
for transaction_value in transaction_values:
balance += transaction_value

Right

transactions_values = [10.0, -5.21, 101.32, 1.11, -0.38]
balance = sum(transactions_values)

Detection

[x] Semi-Automatic

You can detect this smell when you see explicit loops accumulating a result, especially in simple operations like summing values.

Level

[x] Beginner

AI Generation

AI generators can sometimes produce this smell by writing verbose loops instead of using functions like sum().

If you don’t specify the need for cleaner, declarative solutions, they might opt for more lines of code.

AI Detection

AI systems can easily detect and simplify this smell when you ask them to reduce code complexity with simple instructions to “optimize” or “simplify,” most AI tools suggest using sum() in this case.

Try Them!

But Remember: AI Assistants make lots of mistakes

Conclusion

Favoring declarative functions like sum() improves readability and reduces potential errors.

You reduce the need for manual loops and make it easier to maintain. It shows exactly what the code is doing with minimal syntax and clutter.