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How to go from writing code that works to writing efficient, clean code and following good practices? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by andioop@programming.dev to c/learn_programming@programming.dev

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Besides some of the very, very obvious (don't copy/paste 100 lines of code, make it a function! Write comments for your future self who has forgotten this codebase 3 years from now!), I'm not sure how to write clean, efficient code that follows good practices.

In other words, I'm always privating my repos because I'm not sure if I'm doing some horrible beginner inefficiency/bad practice where I should be embarrassed for having written it, let alone for letting other people see it. Aside from https://refactoring.guru, where should I be learning and what should I be learning?

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[–] 0ops@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I agree on doing. I don't think I've ever picked up a good coding practice by reading about it and doing it, I'm just not wired like that. Not that I didn't read good coding practices, but most of them I dismissed as overkill... until later when I realized that while working to reverse engineer and cleanup my old, ugly, code, I had independently "invented" a lot of those practices that I had originally dismissed.

That's the test right there imo, you can't really know how bad your code is until you've been away from it long enough to no longer have memory of your intentions on your side. "Wtf is this variable for again? When I figure it out I'll rename it to be more descriptive". "What? This function is doing way more than it's name implies. Tf was I thinking?"