Beyond Legacy Code

Software Is Read More than It’s Written

Though most people would be surprised to hear it, code is something to be read, like a book or a newspaper article. On average software is read ten times more than it’s written.

For efficiency’s sake, and for the sake of extendibility, software should be much easier to read. Write your code for the reader (someone else) as opposed to the writer (yourself). Software development is not a “write once” activity. Software development is actually a “write many” profession where code is continually enhanced, cleaned up, and improved.

In order to keep up with the changing needs of your users, make your code flexible, changeable, and easy to work with. You now know to use intention-revealing names instead of comments ...