Okay, so I finally got around to trying out that rirua furukawa thing I stumbled upon a while back. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much, just saw the name pop up in some obscure corner of the web and thought, “Why not?” Got this one old project, you know the type, code that’s just… messy. Figured it might be a good test subject.
Getting Started Felt Weird
First step, according to the vague notes I found, was to kind of map out the existing logic visually. Not like a standard flowchart, but something else. Called it “Flow Resonance” or something equally fluffy. Spent maybe an hour just trying to sketch out one particularly nasty function. Felt like I was doing homework I didn’t understand.
Then came the actual ‘method’. It involved breaking things down in a very specific, almost ritualistic way.
- Look at a chunk of code.
- Identify what it really does, ignoring the comments (ha!).
- Rename variables based on their ‘energy flow’ – yeah, I know, sounds nuts.
- Restructure loops based on some pattern they called the ‘ripple’.
Honestly, the renaming part felt the most awkward. The names became super long and descriptive, but in a way that didn’t immediately click. Like calling a simple counter `variable_tracking_iteration_state_for_user_list`. A bit much.
The Messy Middle Bit
Pushing through was tough. Halfway into refactoring a single file, I seriously considered just ditching it. It looked worse than when I started. Everything was broken, tests were failing spectacularly, and the logic felt even harder to follow with those weird variable names and structure.
This took way longer than I expected. What I thought might be an afternoon Curiøsity turned into a couple of dedicated evenings. I hit a wall trying to apply the ‘ripple’ thing to nested loops that depended on each other. The method didn’t really cover complex interactions well, it felt more suited for simple, linear stuff. Had to kind of fudge it and make up my own rules to get past that part, which probably defeats the purpose, right?
So, Did It Work?
Well, here’s the funny part. After I finally got the file put back together, cleaned up the mess I made improvising, and stepped back… it wasn’t terrible. Some parts were actually clearer. The super descriptive names, while clunky, did make the purpose of some obscure variables obvious after staring at them long enough. Breaking down functions the ‘rirua furukawa’ way forced me to isolate side effects more than I usually would.
But would I use it again? Probably not wholesale. It’s too time-consuming and feels overly prescriptive for most day-to-day coding. Maybe, just maybe, for a really tangled piece of legacy code that nobody understands anymore, taking some ideas from it, like the forced decomposition, could be useful as a last resort. It’s like using a weird old tool you found in grandpa’s shed – might work for one specific job, but you wouldn’t replace your whole toolbox with it.
So yeah, that was my little experiment with rirua furukawa. Interesting, frustrating, and slightly enlightening, all at once. Glad I tried it, also kind of glad it’s over.
