Top 77 Robert C. Martin Quotes
#1. There are two parts to learning craftsmanship: knowledge and work. You must gain the knowledge of principles, patterns, practices, and heuristics that a craftsman knows, and you must also grind that knowledge into your fingers, eyes, and gut by working hard and
practicing.
Robert C. Martin
#2. QA and Development should be working together to ensure the quality of the system. The
Robert C. Martin
#3. What would happen if you allowed a bug to slip through a module, and it cost
your company $10,000? The nonprofessional would shrug his shoulders, say
"stuff happens," and start writing the next module. The professional would
write the company a check for $10,000!
Robert C. Martin
#4. If the discipline of requirements specification has taught us anything, it is that well-specified requirements are as formal as code and can act as executable tests of that code!
Robert C. Martin
#5. Good software designs accommodate change without huge investments and rework. When we use code that is out of our control, special care must be taken to protect our investment and make sure future change is not too costly.
Robert C. Martin
#6. God is in the details, said the architect Ludwig mies van der Rohe.
Robert C. Martin
#7. These comments are so noisy that we learn to ignore them. As we read through code, our eyes simply skip over them. Eventually the comments begin to lie as the code around them changes.
Robert C. Martin
#8. If you let the tests rot, then your code will rot too. Keep your tests clean.
Robert C. Martin
#9. Returning null from methods is bad, but passing null into methods is worse.
Robert C. Martin
#10. Redundant comments are just places to collect lies and misinformation.
Robert C. Martin
#11. You know you are working on clean code when each routine turns out to be pretty much what you expected." Half
Robert C. Martin
#13. The topmost parts of the source file should provide the high-level concepts and algorithms. Detail should increase as we move downward, until at the end we find the lowest level functions and details in the source file.
Robert C. Martin
#14. Whatever else a TODO might be, it is not an excuse to leave bad code in the system.
Robert C. Martin
#15. Why do most developers fear to make continuous changes to their code? They are afraid they'll break it! Why are they afraid they'll break it? Because they don't have tests.
Robert C. Martin
#16. Code, without tests, is not clean. No matter how elegant it is, no matter how readable and accessible, if it hath not tests, it be unclean. Dave
Robert C. Martin
#17. Indeed, most of us realize that the requirements are the most volatile elements in the project.
Robert C. Martin
#18. Nothing has a more profound and long-term degrading effect upon a development project than bad code. Bad schedules can be redone, bad requirements can be redefined. Bad team dynamics can be repaired. But bad code rots and ferments, becoming an inexorable weight that drags the team down.
Robert C. Martin
#19. Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.
Robert C. Martin
#20. The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that.
Robert C. Martin
#21. What this team did not realize was that having dirty tests is equivalent to, if not worse than, having no tests.
Robert C. Martin
#22. Of course bad code can be cleaned up. But it's very expensive.
Robert C. Martin
#24. It is unit tests that keep our code flexible, maintainable, and reusable. The reason is simple. If you have tests, you do not fear making changes to the code! Without tests every change is a possible bug.
Robert C. Martin
#25. If you're good at the debugger it means you spent a lot of time debugging. I don't want you to be good at the debugger.
Robert C. Martin
#26. To write clean code, you must first write dirty code and then clean it.
Robert C. Martin
#28. Am I suggesting 100% test coverage? No, I'm not suggesting it. I'm demanding it. Every single line of code that you write should be tested. Period.
Robert C. Martin
#29. Programmers must avoid leaving false clues that obscure the meaning of code.
Robert C. Martin
#30. Cuteness in code often appears in the form of colloquialisms or slang. For example, don't use the name whack() to mean kill(). Don't tell little culture-dependent jokes like eatMyShorts() to mean abort().
Say what you mean. Mean what you say.
Robert C. Martin
#31. Objects hide their data behind abstractions and expose functions that operate on that data. Data structure expose their data and have no meaningful functions.
Robert C. Martin
#32. You should choose a set of simple rules that govern the format of your code, and then you should consistently apply those rules. If you are working on a team, then the team should agree to a single set of formatting rules and all members should comply.
Robert C. Martin
#33. The hardest thing about choosing good names is that it requires good descriptive skills and a shared cultural background. This is a teaching issue rather than a technical, business, or
management issue.
Robert C. Martin
#34. One of the best ways to ruin a program is to make massive changes to its structure in the name of improvement. Some programs never recover from such "improvements." The problem is that it's very hard to get the program working the same way it worked before the "improvement.
Robert C. Martin
#35. A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.
Robert C. Martin
#36. Resisting premature abstraction is as important as abstraction itself.
Robert C. Martin
#37. You should name a variable using the same care with which you name a first-born child.
Robert C. Martin
#38. In an ideal system, we incorporate new features by extending the system, not by making modifications to existing code.
Robert C. Martin
#39. If your function must change the state of something, have it change the state of its owning object.
Robert C. Martin
#40. The perfect kind of architecture decision is the one which never has to be made
Robert C. Martin
#41. You are reading this book for two reasons. First, you are a programmer. Second, you want to be a better programmer. Good. We need better programmers.
Robert C. Martin
#43. Who can justify the expense of a six-lane highway through the middle of a small town that anticipates growth? Who would want such a road through their town?
Robert C. Martin
#44. The complement is also true: Procedural code makes it hard to add new data structures because all the functions must change. OO code makes it hard to add new functions because all the classes must change.
Robert C. Martin
#45. How can we make sure we wind up behind the right door when the going gets tough? The answer is: craftsmanship.
Robert C. Martin
#46. You should be able to run all the unit tests with just one command.
Robert C. Martin
#47. Encapsulation is broken because all functions in the path of a throw must know about details of that low-level exception. Given that the purpose of exceptions is to allow you to handle errors at a distance, it is a shame that checked exceptions break encapsulation in this way.
Robert C. Martin
#49. That these acts are simple doesn't mean that they are simplistic, and it hardly means that they are easy.
Robert C. Martin
#50. Error handling is important, but if it obscures logic, it's wrong.
Robert C. Martin
#51. Duplication and expressiveness take me a very long way into what I consider clean code, and improving dirty code with just these two things in mind can make a huge difference. There is, however, one other thing that I'm aware of doing, which is a bit harder to explain.
Robert C. Martin
#52. Professionals use their powers for good and write code that others can understand.
Robert C. Martin
#53. A system that is comprehensively tested and passes all of its tests all of the time is a testable system. That's an obvious statement, but an important one. Systems that aren't testable aren't verifiable. Arguably, a system that cannot be verified should never be deployed.
Robert C. Martin
#55. Duplication may be the root of all evil in software. Many principles and practices have been created for the purpose of controlling or eliminating it.
Robert C. Martin
#57. The fact that the task to write perfect software is virtually impossible does not mean you aren't responsible for the imperfection.
Robert C. Martin
#58. Try to write tests that force exceptions, and then add behavior to your handler to satisfy your tests. This will cause you to build the transaction scope of the try block first and will help you maintain the transaction nature of that scope.
Robert C. Martin
#59. Few practices are as odious as commenting-out code. Don't do this!
Robert C. Martin
#61. The majority of the cost of a software project is in long-term maintenance.
Robert C. Martin
#62. So if you want to go fast, if you want to get done quickly, if you want your code to be easy to write, make it easy to read.
Robert C. Martin
#63. Duplication is the primary enemy of a well-designed system.
Robert C. Martin
#64. If its dependencies are inverted, it has an OO design. If its dependencies are not inverted, it has a procedural design.
Robert C. Martin
#65. Procedural code (code using data structures) makes it easy to add new functions without changing the existing data structures. OO code, on the other hand, makes it easy to add new classes without changing existing functions.
Robert C. Martin
#66. Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares.
Robert C. Martin
#67. Code formatting is important. It is too important to ignore and it is too important to treat religiously. Code formatting is about communication, and communication is the professional developer's first order of business.
Robert C. Martin
#68. The LSP makes clear that in OOD the ISA relationship pertains to behavior. Not intrinsic private behavior, but extrinsic public behavior; behavior that clients depend upon.
Robert C. Martin
#69. Clean code is not written by following a set of rules. You don't become a software craftsman by learning a list of heuristics. Professionalism and craftsmanship come from values that drive disciplines.
Robert C. Martin
#70. The problem isn't the simplicity of the code but the implicity of the code (to coin a phrase): the degree to which the context is not explicit in the code itself.
Robert C. Martin
#71. It is not the language that makes programs appear simple. It is the programmer that make the language appear simple!
Robert C. Martin
#72. if I must encode either the interface or the implementation, I choose the implementation. Calling it ShapeFactoryImp, or even the hideous CShapeFactory, is preferable to encoding the interface.
Robert C. Martin
#74. the ratio of time spent reading vs. writing is well over 10:1.
Robert C. Martin
#75. Writing clean code is what you must do in order to call yourself a professional. There is no reasonable excuse for doing anything less than your best.
Robert C. Martin
#76. Slaves are not allowed to say no. Laborers may be hesitant to say no. But
professionals are expected to say no. Indeed, good managers crave someone who
has the guts to say no. It's the only way you can really get anything done.
Robert C. Martin
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