
"I was really excited to write this article, because it gave me an excuse to really think about what beautiful code is. I still don't think I know, and maybe it's entirely subjective. I do think the two biggest things, for me at least, are stylistic indenting and maximum const-ness. A lot of the stylistic choices are definitely my personal preferences, and I'm sure other programmers will have different opinions. I think the choice of what style to use is up to whoever has to read and write the code, but I certainly think it's something worth thinking about. I would suggest everyone look at the Doom 3 source code
because I think it exemplifies beautiful code, as a complete package: from system design down to how to tab space the characters." John Carmack himself
replies in the comments.
Member since:
2009-03-17
There is a very big difference between "not being able to do something" and "preferring something else."
a = a + 1 has little ambiguity to it, whereas a++ may have a rather ambiguous behavior: i.e. When does the value for a get updated? Is it implementation specific? etc, etc.