Write Clean Code from Scratch

Contributed by: Maximiliano Contieri

Difficulty level: Easy

You write and read code many times throughout the development lifetime.

During active development, you may rewrite code multiple times as requirements evolve and you solve issues. You will need to read code frequently to understand existing functionality, add new features, fix defects, conduct code reviews, and refactor or optimize existing code for better performance or maintainability.

As a general rule, code is read 10–100 times more often than it’s written or modified. Modern tools like automatic refactorings or AI code assistants allow you to change existing codebases without breaking functional behavior.

As a first step, you want to create clean code from scratch since code is like a window: If you break some part, you or someone else will not care to break another part later on. This is also known as the Scout’s rule, which promotes you to leave the camp better than you found it.

To write clean code you need to understand how your reader will feel after reading it. Good names, good structure, and reading code as prose will make your reader work easier. Creating good abstractions and real-world metaphors will help them understand what is the code’s intention.

While we go through seven best practices below, let’s also take a look at some examples of not-so-clean code.

Good Names

Choose good names favoring real-world concepts over computational ones. The following example is a less ...