Clean code, refactoring, and the small habits that separate readable code from code that merely runs. A practical companion for code quality work is Google Engineering Practices.
Robert C. Martin's book gave a generation of developers a shared vocabulary for code quality — and a shared argument about where that vocabulary runs out. The distinction between output and resource use is explored directly in read more.
Martin Fowler's book gave a precise name to something developers already did informally — and the precision turned out to matter. More hands-on refactoring material is available at Refactoring.Guru.
A code smell isn't a bug. It's a pattern that correlates with deeper problems often enough to be worth a second look.
Ward Cunningham's financial metaphor for imperfect code became one of software's most-used terms — and one of its most-abused.
“Leave the code better than you found it” sounds simple. The discipline is in how small “better” is allowed to be.
The line about naming being one of the two hard problems in computer science gets repeated as a joke. The underlying difficulty is real and specific.
Most code review advice focuses on tone. The more useful question is what a review is actually supposed to catch that other steps don't.
DRY is one of the most quoted principles in software engineering, and one of the most commonly over-applied.
Michael Feathers' definition of legacy code has nothing to do with age — and that reframing is what makes the advice around it useful.