The software development industry, being a part of the general tech industry, is obsessed with new technological advances that promise to make our work simpler and us more productive. Every day, new tools, frameworks and libraries are released, marketed, hyped, and blogged about. Most of them promise to increase productivity and to reduce complexity. Most deliver as promised in the short run, but none will save us in the long run.

With the current shortage of programmers in the Western World, pretty much anyone can get a job banging out a couple of thousand lines of incoherent, kafkaesque gibberish, and then move on to the next task. If they keep up with the new, shiny tools in their particular area of expertise, they may even come to be considered good at what they do. And since the demand for programmers is unlikely to be satisfied anytime soon, they can even make a living from this for a while. I should know - I did it for years.

Maintainable code

However, if you have made a mess, it will eventually catch up with you. No tool, library, framework, or language will save you from the burden of complexity in the long run. And, after all, in the long run, it is the long run that is really interesting.

Hence, this blog is about not making a mess. It is about surviving in the long run, co-existing with, maintaining, and evolving the code you once wrote. Succeeding, more than anything, requires discipline, prudence and humility. It requires putting in an effort to write clear, concise, readable code. All the time. Every day. This is no easy feat.

Hence, Maintainable Code.