The Programming Aphorisms of Strunk and White

codingthewheel.com

24 points·rgp··3 comments

Suggestion of Davin Stanek:

http://www.traceback.org/2008/12/17/coding-lessons-can-be-learned-from-writing/

I actually read Strunk and White as part of a computer science course this quarter, and I made many of the same connections the OP makes. Truly, a masterpiece.

I did notice, however, that most of the recommendations are extremely time-sensitive. It can be difficult in programming just as in writing to make trade-offs between time invested and benefits. In the OP's example about the Window's API, the offending code might be unimportant enough that the developer overhead of figuring out all the parameters would have been wasted effort. Maintainability has to be taken in context of importance and cost: sometimes code just doesn't need to be that clean.

Doing proper cost-benefit analysis (and getting it even remotely right) is still one of my weakest attributes, and it applies particularly heavily when utilising the advice of Strunk and White.

Also, one of my favorite quotes (paraphrasing):

"I apologize for the length of this letter, I did not have the time to make it shorter." -Blaise Pascal

I don't know about this. The point of writing something like it out, that is. Either people want to "get it", or they don't. Either they're curious about computers, or they're trying to get a job done (for whatever reason). Articles like this are preaching flying to birds and fish - the people who understand you are already there, the people who don't, aren't going to care.

"Vigorous writing is concise." - Strunk

This quote is a favorite of mine. Yearn for this, and your writing/coding will improve.

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