"...the main concerns of programming style: descriptive names, clarity in expressions, straightforward control flow, readability of code and comments, and the importance of consistent use of conventions and idioms in achieving all of these. It's hard to argue that these are bad things.But why worry about style? Who cares if it works? Doesn't it take way too much time to make it look pretty? Aren't the rules arbitrary anyway?
The answer is that well-written code is easier to read and to understand, almost surely has fewer errors, and is likely to be smaller code than code that has been carelessly tossed together and never polished. In the rush to get programs out the door to meet some deadline, it's easy to push style aside, to worry about it later. This can be a costly decision. Some of the examples in this chapter show what can go wrong if there isn't enough attention to good style. Sloppy code is bad code -- not just awkward and hard to read, but often broken.
The key observation is that good style should be a matter of habit. If you think about style as you write code originally, and if you take the time to revise and improve it, you will develop good habits. Once they become automatic, your subconscious will take care of many of the details for you, and even the code you produce under pressure will be better."
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