4 ms·
I'd assume that "maintainable" code is boring code - code that is instantly understandable when you look at it and that is hard to get wrong. He's complaining
by saulrh 15y ago
I'd assume that "maintainable" code is boring code - code that is instantly understandable when you look at it and that is hard to get wrong.
He's complaining that that code is boring and not creative, and that as a startup your job is to be interesting and creative. I agree with him.
- reuser 15y agoCreativity doesn't need to come in the form of doing some boring task in a contorted or intentionally complex or showy way, though. You can be creative in choosing tasks and in choosing good novel approaches to tasks. Often the conventional way is bad enough that there is novelty in doing a straightforward and clean implementation. Besides that, getting it done in a way that you can reasonably verify as correct and you don't have to rewrite (read: a maintainable way) means you get to free up resources for whatever you are ultimately trying to do with that code. 'Boring' code plays a huge enabling role for creative code and creative projects. Finally, creativity may be something but it isn't everything; in the rare event that writing code in a way that gets things done or helps people does not provide enough scope for creativity, your activity is more in the vein of pure recreation or performance art, and you shouldn't worry at all about maintainability. Just know what you are doing.