Reading Code: In praise of superficial beauty

http://corte.si/posts/code/reading-code.html

by mdemare • 17 years ago

1 1 17 years ago

mdemare• 17 years ago

Some of the (controversial) meat of the article:

"Good programmers know that a lack of superficial code quality and consistency is the best indicator of deeper systemic problems in a project. If you ever need a quick estimate of the quality of a codebase, this is what you should look at first. If you ever have to work on a project with poor code quality, fix the superficial issues first. Ugly code will obscure deeper architectural issues, increase defect rates, make code review hell, and make the project hard to refactor. This is advice so basic that it usually does not need to be given - good coders understand the importance of superficial beauty at such a deep instinctive level that they will feel compelled to fix cleanliness and neatness issues before working on deeper problems."

Reading Code: In praise of superficial beauty

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