Code Complexity

I wrote a small program this afternoon to parse a set of Python files using the ast module and then count the number of distinct language features used in each file. I then divided the results into three groups:

1. lib: extensions I’ve written for Ivy (my favorite static site generator) that create a glossary, cross-reference figures, and so on.

2. bin: tools I’ve written to convert a set of HTML files to LaTeX, check the structure of book projects, and so on.

3. src: examples used in the Software Design by Example book I’m currently writing.

The examples use fewer of Python’s features than my tools do. I’m rather pleased by this: my goal is to teach general principles of software design rather than advanced Python, and I think that the more of Python’s features I use, the less transferable the concepts will be.

Follow-up: I didn’t mean to suggest that using fewer language features means the code is simpler. Language features are a compression mechanism: if you don’t use them, you often have to implement the same functionality in libraries, which increases the volume of code the next person has to read and understand. (OK, not “has to”, but if we’re comparing apples to apples…) You can move complexity and learning burden around but not eliminate it.