Some years into my career, I struggled with colleagues writing sloppy code

Some years into my career, I struggled with colleagues writing sloppy code. I felt that they didn’t listen to me, when I gave them unsolicited advice. The optional code review mechanisms we set up were only eagerly used by people who cared about readability already. So I started to refer to Clean Code when I needed an authority argument: if it’s in a book, you need a stronger argument against it, and unless you have a sound argument, your code is unclean . I believe Clean Code mostly gets referenced by people who look for someone to agree with them on anything specific. The weaker opinions and examples become “junk DNA” for a selective quoter. Back then, I often didn’t find a section where Clean Code agreed (or disagreed) with me. Mainly because I got influenced by functional programming, which the book does not address. Once I decided to read the whole book, because I wanted to collect the good parts. I found myself only disagreeing in a small number of sections. But at the same time, I was completely unable to use his examples for anything. I think this book serves a purpose. …