Code Simplicity Quotes

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

We flew down weekly to meet with IBM, but they thought the way to measure software was the amount of code we wrote, when really the better the software, the fewer lines of code.

When there is no type hierarchy you don't have to manage the type hierarchy.

Get the weirdnesses into the data where you can manipulate them easily, and the regularity into the code because regular code is a lot easier to work with

Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.

Code wants to be simple... I had to give up the idea that I had the perfect vision of the system to which the system had to conform. Instead, I had to accept that I was only the vehicle for the system expressing its own desire for simplicity. My vision could shape initial direction, and my attention to the desires of the code could affect how quickly and how well the system found its desired shape, but the system is riding me much more than I am riding the system.

I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either.

Orthogonality for orthogonality's sake is not something I'm keen on.

There is a point in your life when you realize that you have written enough destructors.

Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

Sometimes, the elegant implementation is just a function. Not a method. Not a class. Not a framework. Just a function.

Rushing to optimize before the bottlenecks are known may be the only error to have ruined more designs than feature creep. From tortured code to incomprehensible data layouts, the results of obsessing about speed or memory or disk usage at the expense of transparency and simplicity are everywhere. They spawn innumerable bugs and cost millions of man-hours - often, just to get marginal gains in the use of some resource much less expensive than debugging time

Computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy.

Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.

Good code is its own best documentation.

The finest pieces of software are those where one individual has a complete sense of exactly how the program works. To have that, you have to really love the program and concentrate on keeping it simple, to an incredible degree.