What is Clean code?

What does it mean for a piece of code to be called clean? Well, the topic has been in debate for years, and developers have agreed that Clean code is code that is “Easy to understand and easy to change”.

Easy to understand means the code is easy to read, whether that reader is the original author of the code or somebody else. Its meaning is clear so it minimizes the need for guesswork and the possibility for misunderstandings. It is easy to understand on every level, specifically:

• The execution flow of the entire application
• How the different objects collaborate with each other
• The role and responsibility of each class
• What each method does
• What is the purpose of each expression and variable

Easy to change means the code is easy to extend and refactor, and it’s easy to fix bugs in the codebase. This can be achieved if the person making the changes understands the code and also feels confident that the changes introduced in the code do not break any existing functionality. For the code to be easy to change:

• Classes and methods are small and only have a single responsibility
• Classes have clear and concise public APIs
• Classes and methods are predictable and work as expected
• The code is easily testable and has unit tests (or it is easy to write the tests)
• Tests are easy to understand and easy to change

Why do we need our code to be “Cleaned”?

• Clean code will help us to reduce much effort while developing a product.

 If your code is clean, it will help your fellow colleagues read, and understand your code much quicker. It also makes your code easier to manage. Imagine you are a new developer at the A company. Your task for this week is to fix the bugs found in one of the modules. If the code base is clean, you will be able to understand the previously written code in no time.

• Clean code is much easier to maintain

Imagine reading a well-written piece of code, with all the indenting, spacing, and descriptive variable names and think of how quick you can find a piece of code that needs to be maintained. It is much faster for you to run through several lines of well-written code and understand its functions than an ugly-written code base.

• Clean code helps to debug a not-so-hard task

If you have a piece of well-written code, you will be able to follow the code’s flow easily. This will help you when it comes to debugging your program, where you can follow the execution order, and make your guess of the bug’s position in your code.

How to get your code clean?

We can achieve a clean codebase if we take the following things into consideration:

• Mind your variable names. Remember to use as descriptive a name as possible to avoid misunderstanding.
• Pay more attention to your indenting and spacing. Appropriate spacing and indenting will make your code more readable.
• Make relevant comments. Relevant comments will make your code easier to read and understand when you come back to them after a while.