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Joel on Software

Book by Joel Spolsky · 4 quotes · Code, Software, Customers

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Joel on Software Quotes

“We're programmers. Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand. We're not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds. There's a subtle reason why programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: They are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.”

“There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. [...] The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.”