a day ago
- The author asks candidates what makes code 'beautiful' to gauge their perspective on code quality.
- Code that 'works' is not necessarily 'good' or 'beautiful'—the author rewrites code for aesthetics and pride.
- Beautiful code should feel like prose, with attention to formatting, abstraction, and flow.
- Ruby is praised for enabling code to be both functional and beautiful, demonstrated with a DSL example.
- The same principle applies to strongly-typed languages like Go, using functional options to make APIs read like prose.
- Writing beautiful code makes the author happy, turns work into art, and feels like tending a garden.