Book description
As programmers, we’ve all seen source code that’s so ugly and buggy it makes our brain ache. Over the past five years, authors Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher have analyzed hundreds of examples of "bad code" (much of it their own) to determine why they’re bad and how they could be improved. Their conclusion? You need to write code that minimizes the time it would take someone else to understand it—even if that someone else is you.
This book focuses on basic principles and practical techniques you can apply every time you write code. Using easy-to-digest code examples from different languages, each chapter dives into a different aspect of coding, and demonstrates how you can make your code easy to understand.
- Simplify naming, commenting, and formatting with tips that apply to every line of code
- Refine your program’s loops, logic, and variables to reduce complexity and confusion
- Attack problems at the function level, such as reorganizing blocks of code to do one task at a time
- Write effective test code that is thorough and concise—as well as readable
"Being aware of how the code you create affects those who look at it later is an important part of developing software. The authors did a great job in taking you through the different aspects of this challenge, explaining the details with instructive examples."
—Michael Hunger, passionate Software Developer
Publisher resources
Table of contents
- The Art of Readable Code
- A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
- Preface
- 1. Code Should Be Easy to Understand
-
I. Surface-Level Improvements
- 2. Packing Information into Names
- 3. Names That Canât Be Misconstrued
-
4. Aesthetics
- Why Do Aesthetics Matter?
- Rearrange Line Breaks to Be Consistent and Compact
- Use Methods to Clean Up Irregularity
- Use Column Alignment When Helpful
- Pick a Meaningful Order, and Use It Consistently
- Organize Declarations into Blocks
- Break Code into âParagraphsâ
- Personal Style versus Consistency
- Summary
- 5. Knowing What to Comment
- 6. Making Comments Precise and Compact
-
II. Simplifying Loops and Logic
- 7. Making Control Flow Easy to Read
- 8. Breaking Down Giant Expressions
- 9. Variables and Readability
-
III. Reorganizing Your Code
- 10. Extracting Unrelated Subproblems
- 11. One Task at a Time
- 12. Turning Thoughts into Code
- 13. Writing Less Code
-
IV. Selected Topics
- 14. Testing and Readability
- 15. Designing and Implementing a âMinute/Hour Counterâ
- A. Further Reading
- Index
- About the Authors
- Colophon
- Copyright
Product information
- Title: The Art of Readable Code
- Author(s):
- Release date: November 2011
- Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
- ISBN: 9781449314217
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