Engineering Quality

Prefer code that is boring to read, easy to debug, and hard to misuse.

Choose Clarity Over Cleverness

Optimize first for the next maintainer's understanding. A slightly longer implementation is often better when it exposes names, intermediate values, and control flow.

Before choosing a clever abstraction or dense expression, ask:

• Does this solve the current problem, or a speculative future one?
• Would a direct version be easier to review?
• Is the abstraction hiding real complexity or only moving it?

Comment Why, Not What

Comments should explain context the code cannot express: