The Importance of Clean Code

There are ongoing philosophical discussions on whether clean code matters and if it is worth investing time to read it. I won’t engage directly in this debate. Instead, a small example should suffice:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics describes a phenomenon widely known in physics, increasing disorder or entropy. Introducing changes, often referred to in programming, usually disrupts the initial structure of a program. The accumulation of changes and interaction between modules in a system increases complexity, which makes understanding and further modification difficult.

The Reality of Code

This is what our code most often looks like! Ugh…

Source: Bartosz Walter’s lecture on refactoring

Maintaining clean code is about balancing progressive and regressive activities. It depends on the amount and type of information received from the environment. Tasks related to bug fixes or functional enhancements need to be managed effectively to keep the code base maintainable and understandable.

(Text translated and moved from original old blog automatically by AI. May contain inaccuracies.)