What does a good programmer's code look like? [closed]

Answer 1

Quoting Fowler, summizing readability:

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

'nough said.

Answer 2

Succinctly put, a good programmer's code can be read and understood.

In my opinion, a good programmer's code is language-agnostic; well-written code can be read and understood in a short amount of time with minimal thinking, regardless of the programming language used. Whether the code is in Java, Python, C++ or Haskell, well-written code is understandable by people who don't even program in that particular language.

Some characteristics of code that is easy to read are, methods that are well-named, absence of "tricks" and convoluted "optimization", classes are well-designed, to name a few. As others have mentioned, coding style is consistent, succinct and straight-forward.

For example, the other day, I was taking a look at the code for TinyMCE to answer one of the questions on Stack Overflow. It is written in JavaScript, a language that I've hardly used. Yet, because of the coding style and the comments that are included, along with the structuring of the code itself, it was fairly understandable, and I was able to navigate through the code in a few minutes.

One book that was quite an eye-opener for me in the regard of reading good programmer's code is Beautiful Code. It has many articles written by authors of various programming projects in various programming languages. Yet, when I read it, I could understand what the author was writing in his code despite the fact that I've never even programmed in that particular language.

Perhaps what we should keep in mind is that programming is also about communication, not only to the computer but to people, so good programmer's code is almost like a well-written book, which can communicate to the reader about the ideas it wants to convey.

Answer 3

[Purely subjective answer]
For me, good code is a form of art, just like a painting. I might go further and say that it's actually a drawing that includes characters, colors, "form" or "structure" of code, and with all this being so readable/performant. The combination of readability, structure (i.e. columns, indentation, even variable names of the same length!), color (class names, variable names, comments, etc.) all make what I like to see as a "beautiful" picture that can make me either very proud or very detestful of my own code.

(As said before, very subjective answer. Sorry for my English.)

Answer 4

I haven't seen 'Professional ASP.NET', but I'd be surprised if it's better than OK. See this question for some books with really good code. (It varies, of course, but the accepted answer there is hard to beat.)

Answer 5

(I use "he" below because this is the person that I aspire to be, sometimes with success).

I believe that the core of a good programmer's philosophy is that he is always thinking "I am coding for myself in the future when I will have forgotten all about this task, why I was working on it, what were the risks and even how this code was supposed to work."

As such, his code has to:

1. Work (it doesn't matter how fast code gets to the wrong answer. There's no partial credit in the real world).
2. Explain how he knows that this code works. This is a combination of documentation (javadoc is my tool of choice), exception handling and test code. In a very real sense, I believe that, line for line, test code is more valuable than functional code if for no other reason than it explains "this code works, this is how it should be used, and this is why I should get paid."
3. Be maintained. Dead code is a nightmare. Legacy code maintenance is a chore but it has to be done (and remember, it's "legacy" the moment that it leaves your desk).

On the other hand, I believe that the good programmer should never do these things:

1. Obsess over formatting. There are plenty of IDEs, editors and pretty-printers that can format code to exactly the standard or personal preference that you feel is appropriate. I use Netbeans, I set up the format options once and hit alt-shift-F every now and then. Decide how you want the code to look, set up your environment and let the tool do the grunt work.
2. Obsess over naming conventions at the expense of human communication. If a naming convention is leading you down the road of naming your classes "IElephantProviderSupportAbstractManagerSupport" rather than "Zookeeper", change the standard before you make it harder for the next person.
3. Forget that he works as a team with actual human beings.
4. Forget that the primary source of coding errors is sitting at his keyboard right now. If there's a mistake or an error, he should look to himself first.
5. Forget that what goes around comes around. Any work that he does now to make his code more accessible to future readers will almost certainly benefit him directly (because who's going to be the first person asked to look at his code? He is).

Answer 6

Having been programming for nearly 10 years now myself and having worked with others I can say without bias that there is no difference between a good programmer and an average programmers code

All programmers at a competent level:

• Comment Correctly
• Structure Efficiently
• Document Cleanly

I once overheard a co-worker say "I've always been very logical and rational minded. I think that's why I enjoy developing"

That in my opinion, is the mind of an average programmer. One who sees the world in terms of rules and logic and ultimately obeys those rules when designing and writing a program.

The expert programmer, understands the rules, but also their context. This ultimately leads to them coming up with new ideas and implementations, the mark of an expert programmer. Programming is ultimately an art form.