This content originally appeared on Brad Frost and was authored by Brad Frost
Clever Code Considered Harmful is a great read.
When it comes to day-to-day production code, here’s the barometer I like to use: will a junior developer, someone at the very start of their career, struggle to understand this code?
In the context of a shared codebase, good code is simple code. Code that doesn’t do anything fancy. Code that makes minimal use of abstractions. Code that you’d use to explain fundamental concepts to novices.
In our design system work, we tuck into our clients’ developers workflows and spend a lot of time together better understanding their decisions, helping them establish/bolster their conventions, and create a workflow that encourages easy maintenance and contributions. In this spirit, one of our core principles for writing code is “legibility over succinctness”.
This content originally appeared on Brad Frost and was authored by Brad Frost
