Comments on: Beautiful Code Is Important

By: Arama Motoru Optimizasyonu

Arama Motoru Optimizasyonu — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 20:14:09 +0000

i agree with code beuty.Becouse codding is a kind of creativity.And creativity requires beauty.

By: Jonathan Aquino

Jonathan Aquino — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I let my IDE auto-format my code (on Eclipse, I type Alt-S, O).

I agree that “Code should be a thing of beauty”. For me, beauty is of a different kind: beautiful design e.g. judicious application of the GoF design patterns.

By: Genie

Genie — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Thank’s a lot for arrising such an important issue. From what I’ve seen so far this issue (nice-looking code) is the first to be neglected in most projects … :(

By: hammett

hammett — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I’d rather replace the word beautiful by elegant. Furthermore, I’m addicted by a kind of intentional programming, so tiny methods body always dispatching to other small methods, even if no method reuse is achieved.
The code became so tidy that even my grandma can understand.

By: Daniel Farinha

Daniel Farinha — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I agree with Jonathan. To me ‘beautiful code’ is mostly about design.
Code format/identation is left for my IDE to sort out.
Comments are useful, but mostly to producing javadocs out of the code for API reference. When reading the code, the design should explain itself.
The only thing I worry about in code ’style’ is attempting to keep the lines within the 80 character width, and that’s because I don’t like to scroll horizontaly in my small 15″ laptop screen. That also forces me to break down huge lines into bite size ‘readable’ code.

Having said that, making text files look neat is something we should leave behind. I’m all for breaking away from the text file format and move towards richer binary formats, if that means we have more power to express our design.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I certainly find reading ‘beautiful’ code more easy than the norm - but I do think I waste too much time beautifying my own code. It’s almost an excuse to not start working on the next hard problem, as the current one isn’t ‘done’ until it’s pretty.

It should all be delegated to tools.