Programming Performance and Code Cleanliness

There are trade offs between program performance and code cleanliness: clean code, which allows for better maintainability, usually introduces more abstractions, and the wiring between them may impact performance. It boils down to whichever benefits us more, and evaluating that requires context and benchmarks (with a proper setup, clear requirements, and a defined intention).

Nowadays, as programs grow more complicated, requirements keep changing, and the developer community keeps getting bigger, the distribution of work experience (and sometimes work ethic) is widening. A set of coding standards is therefore usually preferred to enable better coordination and management. The cost of poor maintainability and coordination has not yet been evaluated, and I am not sure it can be measured accurately, but it has clearly raised the community’s awareness, so I suspect it is substantial and has severe effects on organizations.