Writing clean code is very hard, if not the hardest part about being a programmer. It’s a skill that requires experience. You truly need to have a good understanding of how code works and how it’s maintained in order to master this skill.
In this article, I’ll try to help you start writing cleaner code by giving you 5 very simple tips that you could start applying straight away. The reason why you should focus on writing cleaner code is fairly simple: clean code helps us minimize the time we spent reading and trying to understand the code. We all know what the consequences are of messy code that’s hard to read.
1. KISS
Keep it simple, stupid. This is exactly how you should code if you want your code to be clean. Since we spent most of our time reading code instead of writing it we should put a lot of effort into keeping the code as simple as possible. This makes it not only easier for other developers to read and understand your code, but also for your future self.
Although this principle might seem simple, it’s very hard to execute. In order to keep your code simple, you should reduce complexity as much as possible. This means that simpler is always better. However, you should never sacrifice readability or maintainability in order to make your code look more simple.
Code that applies to the KISS principle is considered simple, straightforward, and it might even be dumb code. However, writing dumb and simple code is one of the biggest qualities that a developer can have when it comes to programming.
There are a lot of things that you could do to keep your code as simple as possible. One of the things that really stands out is that you should try to avoid abstractions — a lot of the time this only adds unnecessary technical debt.
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