Good Code, Bad Code

1 Code quality

This chapter covers

• The reason code quality matters
• The four goals that high-quality code aims to achieve
• The six high-level strategies we can use to ensure code is of a high-quality
• How writing high-quality code actually saves time and effort in the medium to long term

You’ve probably used hundreds, maybe even thousands of different pieces of software in the past year. Every program installed on your computer, every app on your phone, and every self-service checkout you’ve had the pleasure of contending with—we interact with software a lot.

There are also many pieces of software that we depend on without even necessarily realizing it. We trust our bank, for example, to have a well-behaved backend system that isn’t going to ...