I firmly believe that code maintainability is the number one coding standard.

Good, not runnability, not stability.

I’m trying to explain this in economic terms.

Coding has a cost, just like any other activity. Coding is actually an investment, because it requires people’s intelligence, energy and time, and the investment must be paid back (not talking about Buddhism or communism here). So what is the return?

Personal point of view

If you write the code after 5 years can also be used, the code you see 5 years ago took five minutes to understand what you write code to do five years ago, what how to do, then congratulations to you, as a programmer, you have a fixed asset, the unceasing accumulation because of you, when you encounter the same problem, do you have enough assets allows you to quickly create value, this means that, Given the opportunity, you can have considerable financial freedom in addition to enough to support your family, and suddenly your life is different.

Without that, specifically the accumulation of code, you would almost always have to start from scratch every time you had a problem, and you would basically never be free, moving from company to company until you couldn’t do any more. This is like seed money in the capital world. If there is no seed, there will never be investment results.

Company’s perspective

The company has invested a lot of money to finally develop the software system it needs, and the system has to be worthy of that investment.

If the code is highly maintainable, the company only needs to invest a little more in maintenance each year to make the most of its previous investment. If the code is too low to be maintainable, it means that the system has passed through several staff transitions within the company and is unable to adapt to changing conditions, the most likely outcome is to be discarded and redeveloped. Getting rid of the previous system would mean a complete waste of the previous investment, which would mean a loss. I believe that no owner of any company would like to have such a loss, and that if good corporate management were aware of this problem, they would pay attention to this aspect.

Of course, such companies are so rare that you almost never meet them.

The last

If someone is around to remind you to code better, thank that person for reminding you to code better, which is a good foundation for your future. Of course, this person may not be able to leave for long, because he may not be able to tolerate the company’s low status