Technology will move faster than governments, so don't legislate before you understand the consequences.
Eric SchmidtRead
What I do instead is I will cheerfully spend literally hours on identifier names: variable names, method names, and so forth, to make my code readable. If you read some expression using these identifiers and it reads like an English sentence, your program is much more likely to be correct, and much easier to maintain.
Interpretation
Clear and thoughtful naming in coding enhances readability and maintainability.
This quote emphasizes the importance of using meaningful and clear identifier names in programming. Joshua Bloch suggests that spending time on naming variables and methods can greatly improve the readability of the code, making it easier to understand and less prone to errors, thus facilitating long-term maintenance of the software.
In practice
During a software development workshop, I used this quote to stress the significance of naming conventions to new programmers.
Technology will move faster than governments, so don't legislate before you understand the consequences.
The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.
Proprietary software is an injustice.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
Tomorrow there will be no division to Europe and Asia. These are old concepts that would remain only on maps. Everything will be united. Companies will be united. It is a process of structures growing due to the technological progress.
If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next.. and I wouldn't be raking off 10%!
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