You know you're brilliant, but maybe you'd like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- He advises writing code that is understandable in the future.
- In plain terms
- Write code so you can understand it later.
- What can you take from it?
- Readability is key for long-term maintenance.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What makes code readable?
- How do you maintain old code?
Another view
Sometimes speed is more important than clarity.
More from Linus Torvalds
If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.
Permalink to quote #8 An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program.
Permalink to quote #10 Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix.
Permalink to quote #7
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