Quotes from Kevlin Henney

Write code as if you had to support it for the rest of your life.

If your code needs comments, consider refactoring it so it doesn't.

As Tony Hoare observed: There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

We programmers are weird creatures. We love writing code. But when it comes to reading it we usually shy away. After all, writing code is so much more fun, and reading code is hard — sometimes almost impossible.

Good programming is not born from mere technical competence. I've seen highly intellectual programmers who can produce intense and impressive algorithms, who know their language standard by heart, but who write the most awful code.

Ask yourself, how much of your time do you spend developing someone else's product? How much developing yourself?

Reading other people's code is particularly hard. Not necessarily because other people's code is bad, but because they probably think and solve problems in a different way to you.

Most of the best programmers I know are also very fluent in their mother's tongue, and typically in other languages as well.

When did things go wrong? Probably already at the kick-off meeting. Some of the project members didn't pay attention. Others didn't understand the point. Worse, some disagreed and were already planning their coding standard rebellion. Finally, some got the point and agreed but, when the pressure in the project got too high, they had to let something go.

You don't have to make every module perfect before you check it in. You simply have to make it a little bit better than when you checked it out.

Beauty is born of and found in simplicity.

You need to spend evenings, weekends, and holidays educating yourself, therefore you cannot spend your evenings, weekends, and holidays working overtime on your current project.

Fixing bugs is not making progress. You aren't paid to debug. Debugging is waste.

A non-programmer friend once remarked that code looks like poetry. I get that feeling from really good code, that everything in the text has a purpose and that it's there to help me understand the idea. Unfortunately, writing code doesn't have the same romantic image aswriting poetry.

Kernighan and Plauger noted that "a comment is of zero (or negative) value if it is wrong.

One reason to format the code in a uniform way is so that nobody can "own" a piece of code just by formatting it in his or her private way.

The Boy Scouts have a rule: "Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it.

The next time an idea for a small program springs to mind, awaken your knowledge of the Java class library from hibernation rather than reaching for that JHipster scaffold. Hipsterism is passé; living a simple life is where it's at now. I bet Mort loved the simple life.

Instead of commenting sections in long functions, extract smaller functions whose names capture the former sections' intent.

one of software's biggest obstacles is smart people who purposefully propagate the guru myth.

If we accept that code is design — a creative process rather than a mechanical one — the software crisis is explained. We now have a design crisis: the demand for quality, validated designs exceeds our capacity to create them. The pressure to use incomplete design is strong.

Instead of simply correcting mistakes in code, the purpose of code reviews should be to share knowledge and establish common coding guidelines.

A skilled surgeon knows that cuts have to be made in order to operate, but the skilled surgeon also knows that the cuts are temporary and will heal. The end result of the operation is worth the initial pain, and the patient should heal to a better state than they were in before the surgery.

As a professional programmer, you should know that trying to be focused and "productive" 60 hours a week is not a sensible thing to do.