Clean Code

I’ve been programming for along time now. My first program was probably back in 5th or 6th grade when I had to get checked off on basic computer skills in elementary school. I think they were pretty progressive for 1989. It would have been as BASIC program on an Apple II and gone something like this:

10 PRINT "Hello!"
20 GOTO 10

I got into this seriously in 8th grade programming games in BASIC on the TRS-80s in the typing lab. Then moved though various lanauges (QuickBasic, Pascal, C++, Lingo, Javascript, ActionScript 0, 1 and 2) before landing where I currently am: an ActionScript 3 developer working with the Flash Platform.

Throughout all of this, I really just concentrated on syntax of the language and getting stuff done. But two years ago, I started using design patterns and looking beyond the code into the technique 9or craft) of coding. And in the past few weeks, I’ve really started thinking seriously about how bad I code and how want to code. In my freshman year of college, my first English assignment was a required paper titled: “My Writing Sucks and And Why.” Now I’m doing this mentally.

I picked up a copy of the excellent Clean Code by Robert C. Martin and have just started to read it. A few weeks from now, I fully intent to be a better programmer and look back on the code that I’ll write today and think: “What the hell was I thinking?!”

Note, I’d consider ActionScript 0 to be what ever the hell we were writing for frame scripts in Flash 4. That was painful.

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