Lessons learned from clean coding

Clean Code Book by Robert Cecil Martin
Clean Code
Book by Robert Cecil Martin

I am going to share my experience of reading the book “Clean Code “From Robert Cecil Martin and the books influence on our Team, as a vigorous reader, I cultivated the habit of reading to my team. The habit of reading also extended to share the knowledge with the Team.

Our Teams Group Discussion
Our Teams Group Discussion

We started to share in small groups locally. After some discussion we brought that idea in the International distributed team and every week one of the Team member picks a chapter and reads. He or she chooses a time slot and gives a summary about the chapter he was reading.

The rest of the team members are also demanded to read and participate in the discussion. The TEAM started to discuss about the content of the chapter and its current relevance to the Team.

Learning together as a TEAM
Learning together as a TEAM

 

In a span of 3 months the overall awareness of code quality has improved and we started to give proper naming to our classes, methods, variable and all kinds of names we use in the project. Most of our functions become self-explaining. We started defining the abstraction in the right level. The code readability has improved week by week.

More over when we combine that with TDD (Test Driven Development) the overall Application architecture become more loosely coupled and we were able to develop a highly maintainable and extendable code base for our Stake holders.

We realized a complex application software, when written in clean way, It looks like a master piece art. The elegance of the design and clean coding gives a proud feeling. It’s the same feeling when an artist gets when he completes a painting or any creative person giving his master piece work to the world.

Continuous Learning
Continuous Learning

During this journey I discovered knowing and learning something is not good enough but to achieve mastery we need to practice deliberately.  Writing clean code every day is a worthy habit every software developer should cultivate. I started to respect fellow developers who has an eye for quality and elegance; and who practice clean coding every day.

The journey of learning is a continuous process and it is also contagious. I hope the readers can get inspired and start learning and start practicing to get better at what they do.

Deliberate Practice
Deliberate Practice

Learning is of no use when it’s not practiced, so to be an expert, one needs to practice every day until he become a real expert and gains mastery

Don’t stop when you learn; Start practicing every day to reach the mastery.