Does Your Code Tell A Story?

Alan Stevens

A Desultory Philippic On Code Clarity

WHO IS ALAN STEVENS?

• Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

• ASP Insider

• Occasional Blogger http://netcave.org

• Independent Consultant

• An Enthusiast NOT an expert!

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated.

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

—David Gelernter, Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology

Beauty is the ultimate defense

against complexity.

Be boldBe free

Be truthfulBrenda Ueland

TRUTH!the

Tell

Good ideas come slowly

Stories are found things.

Stephen King

Busyness leads to little sharp staccato ideas instead of big

slow ideasBrenda Ueland

You must freely and recklessly

make new mistakes

You need a tolerance for having no idea where your thing is going.

Merlin Mann

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a pen in his mouth.

Kurt Vonnegut

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

You won't see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.

David Allen

Read a lotWrite a lot

Stephen King

Give Yourself Short Assignments

“All I’m gonna’ do is…”

“Write shitty first drafts”

Annie Lamont

The first draft is the child’s draft.

Begin to write in the dumb, awkward way that an animal cries out in pain.

Natalie Goldberg

You must feel that you have permission to write

the worst junk in the world and it would be okay.

Natalie Goldberg

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It is the main obstacle to your shitty first draft.

Annie Lamont

Three Kinds Of Drafts• The first draft is the “down draft” just get

it down.

• The second draft is the “up draft” clean it up.

• The third draft is the “dental draft” where you carefully inspect each tooth.

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story.

When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Stephen King

Write with the door closed.

Rewrite with the door open.

Stephen King

Your stuff starts out being just for you,

but then it goes out!Stephen King

Once you know what the story is and get it right, as right as you can anyway, it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.

Stephen King

!

When you finally realize what your program is doing, you have to go back and make it look like you knew that all along.

Make it look like it was easy to write this program, even if it wasn’t.

Ward Cunningham

Beauty is the ultimate defense

against complexity.

Thanks For Listening!

Email/IM: alanstevens@gmail.com

Blog: http://netcave.org

Twitter: @alanstevens