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Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

> the code they wrote for the sake of beauty is crap.

From my understanding, this is the crux of the article. The problem with this is the misunderstanding of why people employ patterns in programming. It's not for the sake of beauty, but because of sound architectural principles.

Maybe that's how he interprets beauty, but then using the word beauty diminishes why the code was written the way it was written. That beauty is subjective.

The reality is good code and good practices have real measurable value that mere "beauty" does not.

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Well there definitely is a real problem he is speaking to, in which people apply patterns out of reverence rather than understanding. They want to be able to say at their next interview or meetup that they've used all these patterns. Anyone who has worked in Big Corp has seen this first hand: a great shining tower of beautiful code which is 80% bullshit and ceremony.

In my experience, "good" code and "pretty" code are the same thing - and similarly for "bad" and "ugly". Of course, when I say "pretty", I mean well laid-out, properly documented, non-spaghetti code. I've spent far too much of my time tearing out thousands of lines of "bad" code that wasn't written in a way to allow for easy changes.

My issue is the phrase "sake of beauty." This ignores why this code was written. I'm fine with beautiful code. My issue is the use of the word beautiful in such a way as to imply that beauty was the intent. People don't try to write beautiful code, people try to write good code. That it happens to be "beautiful" is a bonus.

Hopefully my point is clear. I guess it's subtle, but I think a crucial difference.

I actually thought the article would be about indention, style, etc.

Considering his examples, it's not. It's about architectural quality.

Indentation style is meaningless in this context.

I agree, his example makes a case for writing "beautiful" (maintainable?) code from the start.

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