Ron Jeffries just posted a terrific case for clean code, and decoupled a recently-emerged “code can be too clean” meme from a question that has actual merit, “can we spend too much time making code clean?”
Upon discussing the post with Kevin Baribeau this evening, an anecdotal correlation was identified between folks who’ve said things akin to “code can be too clean” and folks who tend to succumb to the pressure to rush development of features.
Over the last year, I’ve made an effort to better identify the styles, idioms, and smells I encounter when reading and writing new Java code. [And, already, a takeaway point! To some of my more successfully sheltered rubyist friends, it may be sorry news to hear that there continues to be new Java code written.]
In any case, I’ve made a concerted effort to internalize habits that I find valuable and to develop a reflex to resist those which I do not. This will be my first effort at documenting either, so I’ll just express them in terms of how my Java looks these days, replete with code snippets as needed.