Writing clean code is important for so many reasons. Developers should adhere to language style guidelines and attitudes of “less is more” wherever possible. Clean code improves the readability, maintainability, and extensibility of our code.
Below, the reader will find two helpful articles for writing awesome code.
PEP-8 is the official style guide for writing code in Python. The standard is kept up-to-date by the Python community and is updated with time as new code conventions come up. The section, A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds, should be especially important for those of us who reside on the more compulsive side of life. These brief guidelines encourage developers to avoid constraining oneself to rigid style rules that do not fit within the code’s local context.
Importantly, the authors of PEP-8 note: “do not break backwards compatibility just to comply with this PEP”. When I reopen an old file, the first thing I do is start refactoring. I’ll spend an exorbitant amount of time updating all the code in the file to my latest style craze simply because I’ve decided that indents of 4 spaces are better than 2.
For the new year, this is a habit that I’m committed to avoiding. I’ll do my best to follow the style hierarchy laid out in PEP-8.
From most to least important:
1. Consistency within a function
2. Consistency within a module
3. Consistency within a project
2. Code Smell by Martin Fowler
This short article opens with a poignant statement from Kent Beck,
“A code smell is a surface indication that usually corresponds to a deeper problem in the system.”
Fowler uses terribly long functions as an example of a bad code smell. In conjunction with the quote above, a ridiculously long function is probably indicative of developers not keeping code purpose built and on task.
It’s easy to get carried away with a function. Our minds can hold a very organic and non-regimented idea of what a program should be able to accomplish. Computers, on the other hand, have the ability to be extremely granule! Almost every computational process you can think of will be optimized by catering to this modular aspect of the computer. Rather than writing a sprawling mess of a function, growing like a slime mould, developers should strive for precision in the creation of their functions.
