The first set of quotes that I chose to include in this list relate to communicating intent. It is important that a developer communicates intent through their code so that when another developer reads it they understand the first developer‘s intention.
1.
“You should name a variable using the same care with which you name a first-born child.” — Robert C. Martin
2.
“A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.”—Robert C. Martin
3.
“Code that communicates its purpose is very important. I often refactor just when I’m reading some code. That way, as I gain understanding about the program, I embed that understanding into the code for later so I don’t forget what I learned.” — Martin Fowler
4.
“If you have to spend effort looking at a fragment of code and figuring out what it’s doing, then you should extract it into a function and name the function after the what.” — Martin Fowler
V.
“Any code of your own that you haven’t looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else.” — Eagleson’s Law
6.
“Every time you write a comment, you should grimace and feel the failure of your ability of expression.” — Robert C. Martin
7.
“When you see commented-out code, delete it! — Robert C. Martin
8.
Obsolete comments are worse than no comments.” — Douglas Crockford
9.
“Comments are often lies waiting to happen. Code should speak for itself whenever possible.” — Michael Toppa
0xA.
“Programmers must avoid leaving false clues that obscure the meaning of code.” — Robert C. Martin
These quotes demonstrate that communication of intent seems to be achieved mainly by naming things in a descriptive manner; including variables, classes, or methods. Sometimes we will decide to break an existing segment of code that we realize may be broken into smaller logical segments, and then describe these new segments by naming them. We also learn how it is favorable to convey intent through code — rather than through comments — as they may become out of date and create misinformation.
11.
“Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares.” — Robert C. Martin
12.
“Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.” — Edsger W. Dijkstra
13.
“If you’re good at the debugger it means you spent a lot of time debugging. I don’t want you to be good at the debugger.” — Robert C. Martin
14.
“Clean code is not written by following a set of rules. You don’t become a software craftsman by learning a list of heuristics. Professionalism and craftsmanship come from values that drive disciplines.” — Robert C. Martin
15.
“There are two parts to learning craftsmanship: knowledge and work. You must gain the knowledge of principles, patterns, practices, and heuristics that a craftsman knows, and you must also grind that knowledge into your fingers, eyes, and gut by working hard and practicing.” — Robert C. Martin
16.
“Your obligation is that of active participation. You should not act as knowledge-absorbing sponges, but as whetstones on which we can all sharpen our wits.” — Edsger W. Dijkstra
17.
“Practice, Practice, Practice! Musicians don’t only play when they are on stage in front of an audience.”— Michael Toppa
18.
“You are responsible for the quality of your code. Not your client. Not your boss. […] You don’t go to the doctor and say: You know what doc? I’m in a hurry, why won’t you skip washing your hands?”— Michael Toppa
These last few quotes talk about professionalism and responsibility; they go hand in hand. Mastering the field of your profession requires a great deal of dedication. You read, you research, you learn and you practice, over and over again. But first, you must take responsibility for your work and also for the people you work with. Part of becoming a true craftsman is not only keeping all that you’ve learned to yourself but also teaching others and helping them grow.
19.
“So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things.” — Ryan Singer
20.
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then start on the first one.” — Mark Twain
fib(8).
“You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?” — Larry Wall
22.
“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” — John Woods
23.
“Leaving nots in a conditional like that twists my mind around at a painful angle.”— Martin Fowler
24.
“Clean code is simple and direct. Clean code reads like well-written prose. Clean code never obscures the designers’ intent but rather is full of crisp abstractions and straightforward lines of control.” — Grady Booch
25.
“There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary hack.” — Kyle Simpson
26.
“So if you want to go fast, if you want to get done quickly, if you want your code to be easy to write, make it easy to read.” — Robert C. Martin
27.
“Of course bad code can be cleaned up. But it’s very expensive.” — Robert C. Martin
28.
“If you say “I told you so”, you are the one who has failed. Because you knew, but did not manage to stop the train wreck.” — Robert C. Martin
29.
“It is not the language that makes programs appear simple. It is the programmer that make the language appear simple!” — Robert C. Martin
30.
“When you are working on a problem, you sometimes get so close to it that you can’t see all the options. You miss elegant solutions because the creative part of your mind is suppressed by the intensity of your focus. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to go home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed, and then wake up the next morning and take a shower.” — Robert C. Martin
31.
“We like to think we spend our time power typing, but we actually spend most of our time staring into the abyss.” — Douglas Crockford
2⁵.
“Repetition is the root of all software evil.” — Martin Fowler
33.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
34.
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” — Blaise Pascal (*)
35.
“It can be better to copy a little code than to pull in a big library for one function. Dependency hygiene trumps code reuse.” — Rob Pyke
36.
“One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.” — Ken Thompson
Another key element to writing clean code is minimalism. It is encouraged by principles such as DRY and KISS.
Don’t repeat yourself. This will cost you later in maintenance when you are required to make changes. What if it isn’t you who will make the changes; will the other developer find all those repetitions you let remain?
As for keeping it simple, you never want to write code that is not going to be used. Sometimes when designing a new component it is tempting to write that additional complementing logic you think can be useful one day. By doing so you force the statement “this is my component — take it or leave it.”. You don’t know if the need for that additional logic ever arises or whether it will answer the use case in the way you predicted it. When the time comes, the logic will be implemented, maybe by you or maybe by someone else, but you should at least make sure you design the component in an extensible way to support future changes.
37.
“Why do most developers fear to make continuous changes to their code? They are afraid they’ll break it! Why are they afraid they’ll break it? Because they don’t have tests.” — Robert C. Martin
38.
“Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!” — Edsger W. Dijkstra
39.
“There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.”— Phil Karlton
40.
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” — Martin Fowler
41.
“Code is like humor. When you have to explain it, it’s bad.” — Cory House
42.
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” — Douglas Adams (*)
43.
“Hey! It compiles! Ship it!”
44.
“Pasting code from the Internet into production code is like chewing gum found in the street.”
45.
“Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning.”
46.
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” — Dwight Eisenhower (*)
47.
“Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.” — Steve Wozniak
48.
“Developer: an organism that turns coffee into code.”
49.
“Java is to JavaScript as ham is to hamster.” — Jeremy Keith
50.
“A good programmer looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.”
Thank you for reading! I hope you found these quotes helpful and inspiring. Have a quote that you think would be worth adding to this list? Let us know in the comment section!
