Clean Coder, The: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers (Robert C. Martin Series)

by Robert C. Martin

“pressure makes diamonds.”

As you mature in your profession, your error rate should rapidly decrease towards the asymptote of zero. It won’t ever get to zero, but it is your responsibility to get as close as possible to it.

But isn’t some code hard to test? Yes, but only because that code has been designed to be hard to test. The solution to that is to design your code to be easy to test. And the best way to do that is to write your tests first, before you write the code that passes them.

I call it “the Boy Scout rule”: Always check in a module cleaner than when you checked it out.

Always make some random act of kindness to the code whenever you see it.

You should plan on working 60 hours per week. The first 40 are for your employer. The remaining 20 are for you. During this remaining 20 hours you should be reading, practicing, learning, and otherwise enhancing your career.

There are three parts to making a commitment. You say you’ll do it. You mean it. You actually do it.