Elegance in Software Part 2

Tuesday, 11 December 2007

In my earlier blog post on Elegance in Software I gave a list of things that I feel contribute to elegant code, and asked for input from my readers. This post is the promised follow-up.

Several respondents mentioned the book Beautiful Code, which is a collection of essays by "leading computer scientists" describing code they feel is beautiful, and why. I've only read an excerpt myself, but it's got good reviews, and what I've read has enticed me to read more. There's also a blog related to the book, which is well worth a read.

Another common theme was the "I know it when I see it" factor. Though I alluded to this in the introduction of my previous post by saying that "elegance is in the eye of the beholder", a lot of people felt this was far more important than any "tick list": there's something special about truly elegant code that transcends the details, just like really good art is more than just a collection of well-executed brush strokes that make up a well-chosen composition. I agree here: elegant code just says "ooh, that's good" when you read it, it has a "Quality without a Name".

Thomas Guest pointed out that appearance plays a part (whilst also discussing the importance of efficiency), and I agree. This ties in with good naming and short functions: if the code is poorly laid out, it's hard to argue that it's elegant. Yes, you can get a "source code beautifier" to physically rearrange the code, but good appearance often goes beyond that: if(some_boolean == true) is just not elegant, no matter how well-spaced it is. This also impacts the language used: it's harder to write "pretty" code in Perl than in Ruby or Scheme.

I particular liked Chris Dollin's characterization: it is obvious what elegant code does when you read it, but it's not necessarily an obvious approach when you haven't seen it before. This ties in with another theme amongst respondents: simplicity. Though I mentioned "minimal code" and "easy to understand" in my original list, "simplicity" goes beyond that, and I think that Chris's obvious solution to a complex problem highlights this. If the code is sufficiently easy to understand that a solution to a complex problem appears obvious, then it's probably a good demonstration of simplicity. Such code is "clever with a purpose" (as Pat Maddox described it).

Jim Shore has an interesting article on good design, in which he argues that the eye-of-the-beholder-ness of "elegant" is too vague for his liking, and instead tries to argue for "Quality with a Name". He says:

"A good software design minimizes the time required to create, modify, and maintain the software while achieving acceptable run-time performance."

Whilst this is definitely true, this ties in with the "tick list" from my previous posting. Elegant code is more than that, and I think this is important: software development is a craft, and developers are craftsmen. By taking pride in our work, by striving to write code that is not just good, but elegant, we are improving the state of our craft. Just as mathematicians strive for beautiful or elegant proofs, and are not satisfied with a proof by exhaustion, we should not be satisfied with code that is merely good, but strive for code that is elegant.

It is true that what I find to be elegant may be different from what you find to be elegant, but I hope believe that good programmers would agree that two pieces of code were "good code" even if they differ in their opinion of which is more elegant, much as art critics would agree that both a painting by Monet and one by Van Gogh were both good paintings, whilst differing in their opinion of which is better.

Posted by Anthony Williams
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Tags: design, elegance, software
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