45 Quotes by Martin Fowler

Use this advice to prod your thinking, but don't use it as a replacement for your thinking. In the end you have to make, and live with, the decisions yourself.

Now I'm a pretty lazy person and am prepared to work quite hard in order to avoid work.

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

You can Change Your Organization or Change Your Organization

If you have to spend effort looking at a fragment of code and figuring out what it's doing, then you should extract it into a function and name the function after the "what".

If oy have to spend effort looking at a fragment of code and figuring out what it's doing, then you should extract it into a function and name the function after the "what".

Notice how I'm playing the part of an enemy to code. I'm actively thinking about how I can break it. I find that state of mind to be both productive and fun. It indulges the mean-spirited part of my psyche. When you are doing tests, don't forget to check that expected errors occur properly.

Life being what it is, you won't get your names right the first time. In this situation you may well be tempted to leave it—after all it's only a name. That is the work of the evil demon Obfuscatis; don't listen to him. If you see a badly named method, it is imperative that you change it. Remember your code is for a human first and a computer second. Humans need good names.

People sometimes ask me what length I look for in a method. To me length is not the issue. The key is the semantic distance between the method name and the method body. If extracting improves clarity, do it, even if the name is longer than the code you have extracted.