I write code that I come back to and don't understand, and realise its terribly complex because I understood everything at the time, but could not imagine what it would be like coming back after a month to make a change, or for someone new to try to understand it.
Code is for people to understand.
Some people think its for being able to write good tests, eliminating all side-effects and shared state, for the computer to be able to run quickly and optimise, to be easy to read.
But its really just about being able to be understood. Most time will be spent in maintenance.
When you modify and debug, you are diving into the middle. You are not walking through the code base from the beginning and reading all the comments.
It needs to be understandable from all locations.
I'm a strong believer in micro-modules. Left pad et. al. I try to create small modules which do one thing well that I can trust and not have to think about.
I write code that I come back to and don't understand, and realise its terribly complex because I understood everything at the time, but could not imagine what it would be like coming back after a month to make a change, or for someone new to try to understand it.
Code is for people to understand.
Some people think its for being able to write good tests, eliminating all side-effects and shared state, for the computer to be able to run quickly and optimise, to be easy to read.
But its really just about being able to be understood. Most time will be spent in maintenance.
When you modify and debug, you are diving into the middle. You are not walking through the code base from the beginning and reading all the comments.
It needs to be understandable from all locations.
I'm a strong believer in micro-modules. Left pad et. al. I try to create small modules which do one thing well that I can trust and not have to think about.