- Ugly Programs # 12 May 2011
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Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they’re much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
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The day-to-day work of programming consists not of writing new programs, but mostly reading and modifying existing ones.