How to Keep Your Code From Destroying You

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has a few quick tips on how to write maintainable code that won't leech your most valuable resource — time. These six tips on how to write maintainable code are guaranteed to save you time and frustration: one minute spent writing comments can save you an hour of anguish. Bad code gets written all the time. But it doesn't have to be that way. Its time to ask yourself if its time for you to convert to the clean code religion."

Comments

Whipping a dead horse?

[east coast]

Disclaimer: I have not RTA.

From the blurb: one minute spent writing comments can save you an hour of anguish

Ummm... Ok. We've seen this tidbit of good advice over and over again. Why is it that we keep pounding away at it? From where I sit, good coders will have good coding practices without having to have it tattooed into their foreheads. A good coder takes interest in being (tada!) a good coder. People who need these type of simple coding tips beat into their heads are not interested in being good coders. It's that simple yet we see it repeated again and again.

Maybe we just need bad coders to be kicked to the curb. There are plenty of us who are willing to follow the basic standards of good coding because we want our code to be understandable by others. We don't see commenting code as drudgery. We don't need it beaten into us.

Let the deadwood go, for once and for all.

I know it seems like a rant but I'm always looking for these good coding practices articles and they all end up saying the same 6 or 8 things. It's becoming as tedious as reading some gaming sites top 10 FPSs... again. We know everyone loves UT and HalfLife. Enough already!