Jonathan Edwards has
an interesting post about the importance – the primacy, really – of
attitude in programming. The basic message is that when there's a choice between simple, readily digestible way to do something and a more complex but also more elegant or beautiful (to a sophisticated or accomplished programmer), then choose the simple way every time. Making those choices for the simple means the overall piece of software will be less complex, more bug-free, more easily modified, etc.
I couldn't agree more, but I don't the picture is quite as clear as he paints it (and I suspect Edwards would agree). For example, one of the tensions in making such choices lies with deciding exactly
what is simple and clear. I had an experience a couple of years ago that illustrates this. I'd written a small piece of code (in Java) that made use of the exclusive-or operator (“^”). To me, that was obvious, simple, and clear – and
obviously simpler than the alternative. But my colleagues disagreed, because they didn't know that operator. To them, writing
(a && !b) || (!a && b) was simpler and clearer than
a ^ b (where a and b are boolean values) which was a huge surprise for me! I eventually settled on the code
a != b, which satisfied both of us. The point is that it's not always easy to decide exactly what constitutes simple and digestible – but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be your goal...
