

Reading Code: In praise of superficial beauty - mdemare
http://corte.si/posts/code/reading-code.html

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mdemare
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."

