Writing Good Code

By ian

Like many developers, I spend a lot of time working with unfamiliar code. Whether it’s code that was written by another developer or code I’ve written a long time ago, it requires me to read through to gain enough understanding to fix and/or extend it. Unfortunately. most of the code is just bad in many ways.

It reminds me how important it is to write good code.

Many developers are confused at what consitutes good code. Writing code isn’t just about reducing errors, it’s about writing code in a way that can be easily understood. Many developers write code that think is easy to understand only to come back to it 6 months later and be completely baffled. I know that I’ve actually had to rewrite stuff I made years ago, not because it didn’t work, but because I couldn’t understand what was going on.

Below are some good resources about writing better code:

Joel on Software - 12 Steps to Better Code - Take special note of Step 5, this one drives me nuts.

Code Like a Girl - An interesting post about elegant code

Code Elegance, Code Balance - Great wisdom from 1989