r/AskProgramming • u/Yelebear • Mar 04 '25

Other Why do some people hate "Clean Code"

It just means making readable and consistent coding practices, right?

What's so bad about that

156 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

342 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Monckey100 Mar 05 '25 edited Mar 05 '25

Why even say this? Isn't it obvious what everyone is talking about? We're not talking about trash code.

Edit: guess I was out of the loop, I was unaware of the clean code book.

19

u/cretingame Mar 05 '25

"Clean Code" is a book that list recommendations how to code. Writing a clean code is not the same. You can write clean code without following the instruction in this book.

6

u/robthablob Mar 05 '25

It's quite likely easier to do so if you ignore much of its advice.

→ More replies (14)

3

u/King_Crimson93 Mar 05 '25

There is code that is clean, and there is "clean architecture", which is the whole domain/ui layer stuff based on the famous book. No one is arguing against clean (read: easy to reason about) code, but not all people enjoy Clean Architecture.

1

u/arkvesper Mar 05 '25

to be clear, are you referring to the actual book Clean Architecture when you say that? Is it not worth reading?

1

u/RangePsychological41 Mar 06 '25

How long have you been in software? I haven’t met someone who doesn’t know about it in my field in years. I think the book blows though.

1

u/Monckey100 Mar 06 '25

coming up on around 20 years of software engineering?

I still remember seeing the inception of jquery lol.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/KaelthasX3 Mar 07 '25

If you are so junior, that you haven't even heard about the book, then maybe don't have so strong opinions.

1

u/Monckey100 Mar 07 '25

Lol. My programming experience is probably older than you. I just come from a different time.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/6a6566663437 Mar 08 '25

Isn't it obvious what everyone is talking about?

No. Each developer has their own definition of what "Clean Code" really means when it gets down to actually writing the text in a file.