Quote of the week

Quote of the week

Posted Aug 9, 2006 2:41 UTC (Wed) by bluefoxicy (guest, #25366)
Parent article: Quote of the week

Good programmers worry about making good programs. You design the program so that it's flexible and workable, not so that you have to change the structures and internal data representations every time you fix a bug or add a feature.

At the same time, don't write horrible code. You really have to write good code to write good programs.

The real mark of a good programmer is good pacing. You start by designing the program, figuring out what it's going to do and how; then you describe the data structures needed for that. Then describe the APIs needed to expose the data structures. Then you worry about implementing those APIs and writing your code around them (that way you're only messing with the data structures in one place). This is radically different than "diving straight in and trying to write good code," which won't work.

So Linus is almost right. Good programmers worry about data structures FIRST; and get to the code when they know what they're supposed to do with it.

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