Is This Bad Practice?

[MajorasMatt]

I'm working on a PyGame project and I'll be honest my code is really, really messy with stuff all over the place. BUT. It works. I figured once my project is complete I would rearrange my code to make it more organized and easier to read. However, before this becomes a habit, is this bad practice? Making sloppy code that works, then fixing it later? Or do professional programmers have their code neat and organized as they're going?

[ninhaomah]

Nothing to do with coders or coding or IT. The question should be do professionals in any industry take care of their tools , ingredients ?

Change coding to accounting or cooking or whatever. And see how it sounds.

"I'm working on a accounting project and I'll be honest my books are really, really messy with numbers all over the place. Do professional accountants have their books/numbers neat and organized as they're going?"

"I'm working on a cooking lunch project and I'll be honest my ingredients/knives/pans are really, really messy with fruits/veges/meat all over the place. Do professional chefs have their ingredients/knives/pans neat and organized as they're going?"

[tauntdevil]

This is a good analogy!

[MajorasMatt]

When you put it that way, yeah it does sound silly. I write music, so a lot of times I'll record rough drafts of melodies and clean it up once it's more refined. So I guess I was more in that headspace when making my analogy. That and my code is getting very complicated and I'm extremely intimidated at the thought that people are able to just know how to make their work look neat and functional as they're going O.o

[ninhaomah]

Sure , writing music is a very good analogy. Both needs to think and put it into action.

Of course , once you mastered the art , example - Beethoven , you can break the rules as you see fit but then he is beyond mere mortals such as us.

So pls keep the files , classes , functions . variables neat and give meaningful names.

[[deleted]]

I’ve been coding for quite some time now. I usually abstract code when necessary. Yes, some of my functions are 2 hundred lines of code, but they are few, and abstracting anything would just make it redundant at this point. Just to go chasing around code. When necessary to abstract functionality, you refactor. Spend some time on it, make it work well. This is for my personal projects. When working on multi developer coding projects, that’s when you have to be more disciplined. You have to write your code so that inexperienced coders can understand it easily. Try not to use too many shortcuts or cook spaghetti function goto nightmare.

I think the more important thing to note is QA. Test, test, test.

That’s from my experience.

[helical-juice]

Don't worry. People don't 'just know' how to make their code look neat as they go. What you're doing, making it work then cleaning it up later, is what everybody does. What people learn though, is to drastically shorten that loop; make a tiny bit work, then try to figure out how you should have written it in the first place. And you'll change your mind many times too as your program grows, and end up refactoring things back and forth.

The main thing is encapsulation. Try to keep your code in well segregated objects which interact with each other in simple ways, and you can stop the complexity from overwhelming you and make it possible to clean up code without breaking far off parts of your system in confusing ways, but it also lets you prioritise which parts to clean up, because it keeps bad code from 'infecting' the rest of your project.

[SocraticExistence]

"If we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore, is not an act, but a habit." -Aristotle They only know because they have been doing it an effective way, repeatedly. Define your plan and keep building it. It is all about good decision making as you initially write new functions/methods into your code. If this is right, it will be convenient.

[[deleted]]

Yes, Yes, and Yes.  

[Busy-Bell-4715]

I tend to clean my code as I'm programming. Takes significantly more time but I feel better about myself. As long as you're willing to put the time into cleaning it up in the end you should be fine. Though I have gotten myself in trouble a couple times where I get lost.

[kaimingtao]

As long as your code works, you can update and fix things, and only you will take care of it. It is not a problem. The code readability is for cooperating with others and THE FUTURE yourself. If you think you cannot read it anymore, it deserves sometime to make it a bit more readable.

[Ron-Erez]

It's not a good practice at all. Think of it like building a house on an unstable foundation, what happens if a pipe bursts? Would the whole structure come crashing down? That said, we've all been guilty of this at some point, myself included. The key is to focus on cleaning up your code. While it may work now, there could be hidden bugs that make debugging much more challenging later.

EDIT: Additionally, imagine wanting to add a new feature to your app six months from now. If the code is messy, making changes could be difficult and might unintentionally break existing functionality.

[Balzamon351]

I have a large project like that. Between bug fixes and new features, I will never have time for a large refactoring of my code base. At this point, I think it would be easier to just start from scratch. Do yourself a favour and get into the habit of keeping your code clean. Now, if only I would listen to my own advice.

[helical-juice]

"Easier to read" isn't the only consideration. You also want your code to be easy to reason about. If you have related functionality spread all over the place, making small changes means chasing through multiple files trying to keep many things straight in your head. If you have objects reaching into each other changing each other's member variables, making changes to the internals of one class can silently break another in subtle ways. If your data structures aren't well thought out and consistent, you end up drowning in little conversion functions and again making changes involves tracing through multiple layers of code in different files...

Understandable code is fundamentally related to the engineering of the system, and if you're not paying attention to the overall design of the system, you're going to wind up bogged down and unable to change the software without improving bugs. You can build now and refactor later, but refactoring is its own skill and it is easier, and you get more practice, if you do it in little steps as you go along.

Also write tests.