Clean Code – Something to Contemplate

A former colleague of mine used to say, “Savings will be made, whatever the cost“; good quote I thought.

What I’ve learnt from Robert C. Martin AKA Uncle Bob founder of the agile manifesto and something to contemplate.

Why are Programmers Slow?

Programmers are slow because they started fast, excited about the new project to build, and without establishing a solid design and architecture. They reach a point where they are only 1% of their productivity when they started.

They become slow because they know working on such badly structured software is only going to make it more messy.

Doubling the staff in a software engineering team will not make it faster, it will only make the new members suck the life out of the old members. Eventually, the old members aren’t really teaching the new members, it is the old code that teaches the new members how things are done in their new environment.

Programmers become slow because they couldn’t keep the code clean. Adding a new feature to a well structured software can be done in a reasonable time. Adding a new feature to a messy code is just going to make it messier.

But why do programmers make messy code in the first place?: The desire to go fast.

Once the code works you’re only half way thru the job, you need to clean it. No one writes clean code first because it is hard to get it working without messing it. Once the code works you will have to clean it and it will roughly take the same amount of time it took you writing it; and that is an amount of time the organization won’t invest in cleaning a code that works!