Code Authoring
February 16th, 2006[ Software Development ]
People who’ve never programmed or written large amounts of code will sometimes mistakenly, apres a few pints, ask me about it. One thing pints will do is guarantee you a long answer from me. The one aspect I often describe that tends to surprise non-techies is the art and authorship aspect of writing code.
Fictional friend says…”I just thought code was code, I didn’t quite realize there was an art to it.”
Ultimately, writing code is no different than traditional writing where the result’s are novels, articles, etc. A hundred different authors will write about a topic in a hundred different and unique ways. Most will be painful to read and downright ugly but will achieve the task of conveying the details of the topic. You can achieve success in the result of conveying a topic without people actually enjoying the act of reading it.
Writing code is no different. A hundred different developers may all achieve the end result the code is meant to achieve, however, a minority will do it in a graceful, well crafted way. Generally speaking, no one wants to read other people’s code but if you have to it’s a rare pleasure to read good code.