THE CODE ISSUE 31
Here is another one of my favorite quotes from the special double issue of Bloomberg Businessweek on computer coding. This one suggests that coding is as much art as science (Paul Ford, “The Code Issue”, 6/15/15–6/28/15, p. 104):
“ You can tell how well code is organized from across the room. Or by squinting or zooming out. The shape of code from 20 feet away is incredibly informative. Clean code is idiomatic, as brief as possible, obvious even if it’s not heavily documented. Colloquial and friendly. As was written in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (aka SICP), the seminal textbook of programming taught for years at MIT, ‘A computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations . . . it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.’ A great program is a letter from current you to future you or to the person who inherits your code. A generous humanistic document.
Of course all of this is nice and flowery; it needs to work, too. ”
