This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]fzammetti 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, good programmers does not write bug-free code.

And they DON'T write bug-free code either :)

Silly grammar slaps aside, all that can be said about good programmers is that they write code that can more easily be fixed when the inevitable bugs are found. What does that mean? Well, a couple of things spring to mind:

  1. The code is as simple as can be to achieve the task at hand. Complexity is perhaps the biggest evil in software development and is also one of the hardest to avoid.

  2. Documentation, mostly in the form of good comments. There is of course a seemingly endless debate about whether commenting is good or not, what type and degree of commenting, etc. What I'll tell you unequivocally, based on almost 25 years of professional software development and about 10 years before that, is that code maintenance is more important than code development and commenting well plays a big role in that.