[phazmatis]

That's great if you're a game AI programmer (an incredibly small group) or you're creating Yet Another Dependency Loader (hey, I guess <language that becomes super popular next year> will only have 100 frameworks to manage modules, you'd better create your own as well).

You know what I really wish? Programmers would spend 1/100th of that algorithm studying on learning to write readable, maintainable code.

[dragonwriter]

> You know what I really wish? Programmers would spend 1/100th of that algorithm studying on learning to write readable, maintainable code.

IME, programmers that write readable, maintanable code and those that have a solid grasp of algorithms and theory as it applicable to the problem domain tend to overlap considerably. Having a clear analytical mental model of the approach to the solution leads to clearer and cleaner code -- and, where necessary, clearer and more useful comments -- than hacking your way to something that works. (And I'd say thats as true of my own code -- where I've done work on both extremes of the clear model to hacking-my-way-through axis -- as of others' code I've seen.)

[computerjunkie]

>>>learning to write readable, maintainable code.

Which is why I love python. Have you seen some poorly written JavaScript that's poorly indented and has no comments? Until there is a universal guideline for JavaScript and that developers follow, I won't have a go at it again.

[colanderman]

Indentation is pretty low on the list of things that make code maintainable or not. (If it bothers you, just pass the code through a pretty-printer.)

Much more important is to pay attention to system-level measures such as modularity, abstraction, (de)coupling, and documentation. 99% of maintenance nightmares are due to code that is not modular (and thus not easily replaced), is abstracted too much or too little (leading respectively to obtuse or repetitive code), highly coupled (causing brittleness when assumptions are broken), or poorly documented.

(There are probably others, but these are the first to come to my head. These measures are also not necessarily orthogonal.)

[swartkrans]

Your comment comes across as bitter and sarcastic. It doesn't sound like you like being a programmer.