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The Goal Of Clean Code Isn’t Perfect Code, but Maintaining Agility
How over-engineering in the name of clean code actually hurts maintainability
There’s a lot written about clean code, about technical debt, and about the techniques and smells that tell you when code isn’t right. But let’s be realistic, code will never be completely clean. This turns the objective of achieving perfect code into an unattainable chimera. But what if I told you it’s not necessary? That the entire goal of the clean code movement isn’t to have code you can feel proud to show off, but to have code that’s easy to maintain and be agile implementing new functionalities?
‘Principles from day one’ philosophy
When I taught classes at university I had a very clear idea of how to bring knowledge from the company to the new batches of students, and one of the main points was clean code: students had to leave university not only knowing how to write good code, but also clean code.
Within everything I taught to achieve that clean code, I also included the SOLID principles, an indispensable tool with clear guidelines that help maintain clean code. These improve readability, facilitate maintenance, reduce coupling, and promote reusability.
