Code Review – Repeating Patterns

Let’s do a code review of the plugin as it stands now with 2 custom meta boxes. What do you see? Repeating code patterns. Right? Both the subtitle and portfolio details meta boxes have the same code patterns.

Why is that problematic? Think about it.

• It takes your time to refactor the first implementation to make it’s function names unique.
• It takes your time to copy the first implementation to another and then change all of the specifics including the callback function names.
• That editing time is exponential by the number of implementations, i.e. your time x number of meta boxes.
• The number of error opportunities is equally as exponential, i.e. number of meta boxes x making an error potential.
• If something changes, you have to change it in all of the implementations. That increases your time and the potential to make an error.

Time is money.

Therefore, for our plugin as it is right now, the code review would fail due to repeating code patterns that need to be abstracted to separate the implementation from the meta box handling and generation.