Timothy Lochner

One thing I'm learning to love about Task Based Programming (is that an existing term? TBP?) is that it makes some habits clear. For example, there seem to be two camps about function length. One says "Functions should do exactly one thing".

But then you see an entire codebase of 1-line functions (hyperbole, I know). The opposite side you see these monstrosities that are hard to follow. Occasionally a pragmatic engineer is capable of writing a good monster function, but it takes discipline.

In Task Based Programming (at least, the variety I'm doing), the "size" of a function has real meaning, because each function is (usually) a task. Your function length and design becomes determined by profiling. Seeing core usage drop? Might be that function is too "big".

Spending a lot of time in task overhead? Tasks are too small: try batching work together (which may take some re-organization). For this, many small loops is better than 1 loop that does many things (parallelizes better).