Monday, December 19

Is it memorable?

Kathy Sierra writes about the importance of increasing the emotional content of what you do to make it memorable and reduce the amount of time needed to learn things.

We hear a lot about techniques to make software development take less time and produce results that are easier to maintain. Much has been written about patterns and practices of development. However, if you have some code that will need to be maintained, you should try and make it mean something to the person who is going to have to maintain it. Put in comments relating your code to real world events that arouse feelings in people and don’t be afraid to be different or give functions surprising or funny names. Try and make the person who is going to maintain your code have fun, especially if the system you are working on isn't "fun" of itself – they will do a better job if they are enjoying themselves than if you write everything in a dull academically correct way.

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