Robert Martin

“Honesty in small things is not a small thing.” It was a good omen consistent with what I already wanted to say here. Small things matter. This is a book about humble concerns whose value is nonetheless far from small

attentiveness to detail is an even more critical foundation of professionalism than is any grand vision.

Quality is the result of a million selfless acts of care—not just of any great method that descends from the heavens. That these acts are simple doesn’t mean that they are simplistic, and it hardly means that they are easy. They are nonetheless the fabric of greatness and, more so, of beauty, in any human endeavor.

Neither architecture nor clean code insist on perfection, only on honesty and doing the best we can. To err is human; to forgive, divine.

specifying requirements in such detail that a machine can execute them is programming. Such a specification is code.

Remember that code is really the language in which we ultimately express the requirements.

We’ve all looked at the mess we’ve just made and then have chosen to leave it for another day. We’ve all felt the relief of seeing our messy program work and deciding that a working mess is better than nothing.

This race can go on for a very long time. I’ve seen it take 10 years. And by the time it’s done, the original members of the tiger team are long gone, and the current members are demanding that the new system be redesigned because it’s such a mess.

Most managers want good code, even when they are obsessing about the schedule. They may defend the schedule and requirements with passion; but that’s their job. It’s your job to defend the code with equal passion.

The managers and marketers look to us for the information they need to make promises and commitments; and even when they don’t look to us, we should not be shy about telling them what we think. The users look to us to validate the way the requirements will fit into the system. The project managers look to us to help work out the schedule. We are deeply complicit in the planning of the project and share a great deal of the responsibility for any failures; especially if those failures have to do with bad code!