June 06, 2012 - VitoMd and the Evil Machine

Clean Code Book - top 5 tips

Some month ago I read the book: Clean Code, I highly recommend it. Here are the best tips that I found.

  • Boy-scout Law: Leave the campground cleaner than you found it. The cleanup doesn't have to be something big.  If you have to modify something, try to improve the readability of nearby code
  • Functions:
    • Must be short (5 lines)
    • Better without arguments or less than 2
    • Should do only one thing, do it well, and have no side effects
  • Variables
    • Better with long and descriptive names
    • Be consistent. Don't use get and retrieve for the same
    • Use constant. Like MAX_NUMBER_LINES instead of just 10
  • Comments
    • It's better to write a descriptive function than a comment
    • Outdated comments confuse
    • Instead of comment an ugly function, try to refactor it, so it express clearly what it does
  • Classes
    • Small classes (200 lines)
    • Line width < 120

edit: These are my notes from the book "Clean Code" ,Robert C. Martin. I know that some tips are polemic so I wanted to share it to know what others think about it. You can read  clean code articles  by Robert C Martin

edit2: I want to share more info about the "less that 2 arguments" and 5 line functions.

The author says: "The ideal number of arguments for a function is zero (niladic). Next comes one (monadic), followed closely by two (dyadic). Three arguments (triadic) should be avoided where possible. More than three (polyadic) requires very special justification -- and then shouldn't be used anyway."

A really good stackoverflow 's thread  about the "5 lines functions"

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