Perl Style: Elegance

Jan 1, 1998 by Tom Christiansen

• `It is very hard to get things both right (coherent and correct) and usable (consistent enough, attractive enough).’ –Dennis Ritchie
• Strive always to create code that is functional, minimal, flexible, and understandable – not necessarily in that order.
• Think first. Then hack. Now throw it out. Repeat. Fred Brooks says, `Build one to throw away.’ Always rewrite your code from scratch, preferably twice. Just as I did it with drafts of papers in grammar school. It improves understanding, gets the creative juices flowing, and produces a far finer end-product.
• Sometimes making code shorter improves maintainability; other times it does not.

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Copyright © 1998, Tom Christiansen All rights reserved.