Baby Code

During my working career I have been accused of writing "baby code" and wasting space and time making it look good. This is a response to those allegations.

But first a story. One day a young programmer came up to me and said she had been given someone else's code to modify. After spending several hours trying to figure out how it worked, she gave up. She then went to the original programmer and asked for help understanding what the code did. He tried for half an hour and said he would have to get back to her. Several hours later he returned to explain his code. (It was very clever.) He then accused her of writing "baby code". She told me that her code was just how I had taught her.

I have several comments on "baby code" and "pretty code".

• A majority of the cost of a piece of software is in maintenance and modification. If "baby code" makes it easier to read and modify, it cost less.


• "Pretty code" is easier to read; Thus easier to understand; Thus easier to maintain.
  If spaces in code, aligning vertically code snippets, blank lines, indentation, etc means the code runs a few milliseconds slower than desired, you are using the wrong language.


• And yes, there are times when milliseconds count, but that is not the case for most code.


• It just looks better.


• Too many programmers (and managers) are hung up of the latest language, methodology, framework, ... Sometimes the "old fashion" way is better in the long run.