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Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

addyosmani.com

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Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#91

Post by stefanos82 »

munificent wrote: post #68
imoverclocked wrote: post #57

As someone who has gone back and read my old code as well as a lot of others old code, there is no such thing as good code. IMHO, the problem is one of cultural context which is often not shared between generations of coders. Languages and best practices can change so violently that best-practices one decade are often anti-patterns in the next. As a codebase outlives its best-practices, do you stick with them and ext…

I think about this all the time when it comes to evolving systems. I work on a programming language, and these tensions are core to my job. In the context of a language, I think it can be: * Modern, where the language's features and idioms reflect the best way we know to write good, clean code today. * Compatible, where code written in the language years ago continues to run the same as when first written. * Simple,…

You mean your work on Dart at Google or are you working on a new programming language right now?

If it's the latter, I need more info please!

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#92

Post by cookiengineer »

jiggawatts wrote: post #90
38 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no such thing as good code definitely not true. this is good code: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/file.c this is good code: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/strconv/atoc.go its formatted, commented, direct. the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does.

By linking to those examples you confirmed the point you were trying to refute. From my personal perspective this is mediocre code at best. It’s written in an unsafe language. Littered with macros, which in C are not hygienic and are land mines in waiting. Constants defined with lowercase and not actually marked as const. Double underscores everywhere, which are the bad alternative to namespaces seen in weak language…

I think I just fell in love with you.

Finally a sane person Honestly, I never understood why so many developers abbreviate function names or variables. Is it so much pain to type abc for auto completion?

Why not simply name fd file_descriptor?

Short names are a mental barrier and a level of abstraction that can easily be avoided.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#93

Post by laserDinosaur »

An article on HN a while ago posited that 'bad code' is directly correlated to forgetting what the code does over time - not the code quality itself. When you green-field a project, everything is fresh in your memory and the code feels great. When you come back to the exact same code a year later you you've lost your landmarks, there's workarounds you don't remember why they exist, suddenly you hate it, ugh this code is terrible! So you re-write it, making you more familiar with the code again and making it easy to remember - suddenly its good code!

I try to keep that in mind when writing my code. Sometimes its comments, sometimes its documentation, sometimes its CleanCode™, sometimes its big blocks of text explaining why the heck a certain class exists, but my approach is "Write it for myself in a year when I can't remember what the hell half this stuff does", using every tool at my disposal to achieve that.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#94

Post by PartiallyTyped »

avg_dev wrote: post #84
imoverclocked wrote: post #57

As someone who has gone back and read my old code as well as a lot of others old code, there is no such thing as good code. IMHO, the problem is one of cultural context which is often not shared between generations of coders. Languages and best practices can change so violently that best-practices one decade are often anti-patterns in the next. As a codebase outlives its best-practices, do you stick with them and ext…

i don't agree with this take at all. good code solves the problem at hand. good code is as simple as possible. good code is testable and tested. good code is minimal. good code is performant. good code is maintainable. good code is understandable. yes it matters somewhat that you have some consistency of the way you code. that's a secondary thing

Good code is sound.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#95

Post by crickey »

jiggawatts wrote: post #90
38 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no such thing as good code definitely not true. this is good code: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/file.c this is good code: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/strconv/atoc.go its formatted, commented, direct. the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does.

By linking to those examples you confirmed the point you were trying to refute. From my personal perspective this is mediocre code at best. It’s written in an unsafe language. Littered with macros, which in C are not hygienic and are land mines in waiting. Constants defined with lowercase and not actually marked as const. Double underscores everywhere, which are the bad alternative to namespaces seen in weak language…

Complains about the craftmans tools rather then the product. IT is rappidly becoming an unusable mess even though every generation of programing languages and frameworks promises revolutions. Honestly i think programing is doomed as man cannot look past the symbolic. Hooked like a lost poet, only complaining about the words used never seing the beauty.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#96

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #80
majikandy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good alternative is code without comments that communicates just as well as that code without the comments. Not necessarily better but less likely to slip out of sync with the comments upon change.

I'm a big fan of self documenting code, but especially when I'm doing quick and dirty projects for myself, where I value speed and cleverness over correctness, the comments really help. Especially when it comes to explaining past me's cleverness.

[deleted]

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#97

Post by henry_bone »

"At the start of my book, Learning JavaScript Design Patterns, I say "good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it". It is an intimate correspondence, from one developer to another, spanning time and space."

Seriously?!

It's simple. It's a matter of respect, and treating others as you would like to be treated. It's no fun trying to figure out the "why?" of some code you've inherited responsibility for. It can be frustrating and time consuming.

So why would you put others through it. Make the code and the reasoning behind it as clear to the next dev as possible. Explain it with comments. Refer to issue links. Make it so that there's minimal - preferably zero - unnecessary digging for the next poor soul who'll work on it.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#98

Post by dlisboa »

m00x wrote: post #62
ThalesX wrote: post #12

Sorry next developer, I'm on a tight deadline, used to love this craft, now I just do what the product people tell me to get a nice paycheck.

The craft is not the code, but the product. You can have beautiful code and garbage product, and great code and a garbage product. If your PM is pushing bad products, that's on them. Your job is to deliver good product, not good code.

That’s not a great way to look at it. You can be passionate about the craft and not passionate about the product. You can usually find interesting problems relating to craftsmanship even when doing things you’re not thrilled to do.

Let’s be honest: sometimes you’re not “changing the world” like many founders like to think, just building yet another shopping cart.

If you lose love for your craft there’s no product that’ll cure it.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#100

Post by imoverclocked »

38 wrote: post #70
imoverclocked wrote: post #57

As someone who has gone back and read my old code as well as a lot of others old code, there is no such thing as good code. IMHO, the problem is one of cultural context which is often not shared between generations of coders. Languages and best practices can change so violently that best-practices one decade are often anti-patterns in the next. As a codebase outlives its best-practices, do you stick with them and ext…

> there is no such thing as good code definitely not true. this is good code: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/file.c this is good code: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/strconv/atoc.go its formatted, commented, direct. the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does.

> the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does

Do you have a source on what I have managed to write or is this just guessing and calling it "fact?"

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