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Discussion on: Clean code, dirty code, human code

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d_ir profile image
Daniel Irvine 🏳️‍🌈

Not quite. Firstly this has nothing to do with being fragile or easily offended, it’s got everything to do with the skill of being able to communicate feedback about quality issues in a way that keeps the recipient of that feedback on board with the message you’re trying to get across. Admittedly this skill doesn’t come easy to many developers, since it’s one of those hard people skills, but it’s an important skill that mature developers will nurture and develop over time.

Secondly, having taught many bootcamp grads as a coach and mentor, I’ve always found that saying ”This code isn’t clear to me” gets a much better response than ”This code isn’t clean”.

One is a statement of fact that puts both teacher and student on an equal footing. The other is an unnecessary judgement.

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fraggedreality profile image
Paul

I really like that perspective. Thank you for sharing.

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daniel13rady profile image
Daniel Brady

saying ”This code isn’t clear to me” gets a much better response than ”This code isn’t clean”.

I'm so glad you highlighted this difference with an example from a human:human interaction 👏

I think that's something we often forget, that these terms and principles are meant to help us communicate more effectively with the human readers of our code, not (or not primarily) with the machine and our internal ego.