The original article was posted by Michael Veksler on Quora

A very well known fact is that code is written once, but it is read many times. This means that a good developer, in any language, writes understandable code. Writing understandable code is not always easy, and takes practice. The difficult part, is that you read what you have just written and it makes perfect sense to you, but a year later you curse the idiot who wrote that code, without realizing it was you.

The best way to learn how to write readable code, is to collaborate with others. Other people will spot badly written code, faster than the author. There are plenty of open source projects, which you can start working on and learn from more experienced programmers.

Readability is a tricky thing, and involves several aspects:

1. Never surprise the reader of your code, even if it will be you a year from now. For example, don’t call a function max() when sometimes it returns the minimum().
2. Be consistent, and use the same conventions throughout your code. Not only the same naming conventions, and the same indentation, but also the same semantics. If, for example, most of your functions return a negative value for failure and a positive for success, then avoid writing functions that return false on failure.
3. Write short functions, so that they fit your screen. I hate strict rules, since there are always exceptions, but from my experience you can almost always write functions short enough to fit your screen. Throughout my carrier I had only a few cases when writing short function was either impossible, or resulted in much worse code.
4. Use descriptive names, unless this is one of those standard names, such as i or it in a loop. Don’t make the name too long, on one hand, but don’t make it cryptic on the other.
5. Define function names by what they do, not by what they are used for or how they are implemented. If you name functions by what they do, then code will be much more readable, and much more reusable.
6. Avoid global state as much as you can. Global variables, and sometimes attributes in an object, are difficult to reason about. It is difficult to understand why such global state changes, when it does, and requires a lot of debugging.
7. As Donald Knuth wrote in one of his papers: “Early optimization is the root of all evil”. Meaning, write for readability first, optimize later.
8. The opposite of the previous rule: if you have an alternative which has similar readability, but lower complexity, use it. Also, if you have a polynomial alternative to your exponential algorithm (when N > 10), you should use that.

Use standard library whenever it makes your code shorter; don’t implement everything yourself. External libraries are more problematic, and are both good and bad. With external libraries, such as boost, you can save a lot of work. You should really learn boost, with the added benefit that the c++ standard gets more and more form boost. The negative with boost is that it changes over time, and code that works today may break tomorrow. Also, if you try to combine a third-party library, which uses a specific version of boost, it may break with your current version of boost. This does not happen often, but it may.

Don’t blindly use C++ standard library without understanding what it does - learn it. You look at std::vector::push_back() documentation at it tells you that its complexity is O(1), amortized. What does that mean? How does it work? What are benefits and what are the costs? Same with std::map, and with std::unordered_map. Knowing the difference between these two maps, you’d know when to use each one of them.

Never call new or delete directly, use std::make_unique and [cost c++]std::make_shared[/code] instead. Try to implement usique_ptr, shared_ptr, weak_ptr yourself, in order to understand what they actually do. People do dumb things with these types, since they don’t understand what these pointers are.

Every time you look at a new class or function, in boost or in std, ask yourself “why is it done this way and not another?”. It will help you understand trade-offs in software development, and will help you use the right tool for your job. Don’t be afraid to peek into the source of boost and the std, and try to understand how it works. It will not be easy, at first, but you will learn a lot.

Know what complexity is, and how to calculate it. Avoid exponential and cubic complexity, unless you know your N is very low, and will always stay low.

Learn data-structures and algorithms, and know them. Many people think that it is simply a wasted time, since all data-structures are implemented in standard libraries, but this is not as simple as that. By understanding data-structures, you’d find it easier to pick the right library. Also, believe it or now, after 25 years since I learned data-structures, I still use this knowledge. Half a year ago I had to implemented a hash table, since I needed fast serialization capability which the available libraries did not provide. Now I am writing some sort of interval-btree, since using std::map, for the same purpose, turned up to be very very slow, and the performance bottleneck of my code.

Notice that you can’t just find interval-btree on Wikipedia, or stack-overflow. The closest thing you can find is Interval tree, but it has some performance drawbacks. So how can you implement an interval-btree, unless you know what a btree is and what an interval-tree is? I strongly suggest, again, that you learn and remember data-structures.

These are the most important things, which will make you a better programmer. The other things will follow.

You may use the camera application on a regular basis. Taking photos of family gatherings, of the scenery around you, or just a self-photo with you and your friends. But, as you may find out, pressing that picture button on the screen is not the easiest thing to do. You may not hit it when you attempt to press it, or you aren’t sure if you pressed it at all.

In a recent update by Apple, the iPhone can now take photos without the use of that button. Although you may continue to use it, an easier method to take photos would definitely be pressing your volume buttons. When you have everyone situated, and ready to take a picture, you don’t have to move your finger over to the camera button. Just put your finger on one of the volume keys on the left hand side of your phone, and press it, and your iPhone should take the picture! It’s just that easy.

Recently, the new iOS update had added Reminders to the iPhone. If you ever found yourself setting notes on your iPhone to remember to do things, such as buying milk while at the grocery store, this process has become leagues upon leagues simpler, and faster. On your iPhone is an application named “Reminders”. Tap on this application and experience the new world of To-Do lists.

Right away, you are greeted by a screen that looks similar to a notepad, where you would be scribbling down reminders for this, and for that. To start off, tap on the plus button, and you are able to input the reminder you want. Say you want to be reminded to “Buy Milk.” Just type that into the application and you’re good to go.

But wait, there’s more. What this new application brings to the table that is extremely useful is the fact that your iPhone can remind you to do that task at a certain location, which, in this case, is buying milk. If you had saved your regular grocery store in your Maps application as a favorite location, you are able to do so. (To save a favorite location, go into your Maps application, search for your nearest grocery store that you regularly shop at, tap on the pin, tap on the blue arrow to get more information, and “Add to Bookmarks.”) In order to remind you to buy milk at your favorite grocery store, slide the “Off” to “On” and you are now able to set where you would like to be reminded at, and at what point in time. Now, you will never leave the grocery store without buying milk!

Jeff Nelson, a former Googler and inventor of Chromebook says on Quora, “One habit I've clung to is writing small prototypes when I'm trying to learn new concepts.
For example, I'll sit down with a book or a web page, and over the course of a few hours, write 30 or 40 programs all of them only a few dozen lines long.  Each program intended to demonstrate some simple concept. This prototyping makes it very easy to try out many concepts in a short period of time.”

Miguel Paraz, Software Engineering Student habit is to “keep a log in a text file or document on my work computer. Before trying to solve a problem, I write it down first. And then I describe the details as they happen.”