Chapter 58. A Message to the Future
MAYBE ITâS BECAUSE MOST OF THEM ARE SMART PEOPLE, but in all the years Iâve taught and worked side by side with programmers, it seems that most of them thought that since the problems they were struggling with were difficult, the solutions should be just as difficult for everyone (maybe even for themselves a few months after the code was written) to understand and maintain.
I remember one incident with Joe, a student in my data structures class, who had to come in to show me what heâd written. âBetcha canât guess what it does!â he crowed.
âYouâre right,â I agreed, without spending too much time on his example and wondering how to get an important message across. âIâm sure youâve been working hard on this. I wonder, though, if you havenât forgotten something important. Say, Joe, donât you have a younger brother?â
âYep. Sure do! Phil! Heâs in your Intro class. Heâs learning to program, too!â Joe announced proudly.
âThatâs great,â I replied. âI wonder if he could read this code.â
âNo way!â said Joe. âThis is hard stuff!â
âJust suppose,â I suggested, âthat this was real, working code, and that in a few years, Phil was hired to make a maintenance update. What have you done for him?â Joe just stared at me, blinking. âWe know that Phil is really smart, right?â Joe nodded. âAnd ...
Get 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.