A little while back I had a technology director tell me it doesn’t matter how well code is written as long as it works without breaking and gets the job done on time. Why sweat it using complicated techniques that not everyone understands when there are more simple ways to do the work. After all, things can look the same on the surface regardless of it being well engineered or put together with duct tape and glue.

This guy liked the intellectually lazy, brute force approach. Don’t think. Just start coding now and get it done. Copy and Paste are now your two best friends. Well, mankind did build the pyramids with Stone Age technology. So I suppose there’s a lot you can accomplish with brute force, but I prefer to use my brain.

Writing software is a very creative discipline that requires a lot of abstract thinking about organization and performance. There are thousands of ways an application could be engineered. It first involves thoughtful planning at the beginning before a single line of code is ever considered.

Writing beautiful code is not just some nerdy game programmers engage in to see who can sit atop nerd mountain with their 4x scepter of insight. It’s about pure design that solves a problem. And there’s a real benefit to business. Beautiful code saves money. Beautiful code makes money. Ugly code gets work done quicker, but it’s like winning the battle, and losing the war. In time, bugs pop up and clients make changes that are impossible to accommodate. Sounds like time for an analogy.

Web sites and applications have a lot in common with cars; they both have a purpose and a personality. Just as we judge a car as being good or bad for a multitude of reasons, we can draw our analogy from these similar evaluations.

A car is designed around the driver, but for many it’s what’s under the hood that counts. Engines can be a mystery though. Sure, people get the basics, but it takes a mechanic to be able to take it apart and put it back together and an engineer to create one from scratch.

When we run a piece of software we look at obvious performance issues. Does it run? How often does it break? Most people you work with will get it up to this point. And from what I have seen, they only care about it up to this point. But, what about real performance?

In the automotive world, performance is well marketed to consumers. They take a certain feature, give it a name, and tell the consumer to want it. Traction control, dual overhead cams, and fuel injection are sold to the public regardless if they have a clue about what it means. The car nerds understand dual overhead cams makes for a more powerful engine. The general public just knows it goes faster.

Beautiful code is high performance. And everyone wants that because it’s faster. Google markets their speed. Type in any topic and you will see at the top of each page a list of how many things were returned and how fast you got them. It’s really impressive when you stop to consider how much data is being sorted to return relevant information. It doesn’t matter if you are writing code or building an engine, you can’t get good performance from a lack of engineering. Speed is good, but maintenance is even more import.

Cars are expensive to maintain and so is software. A study conducted by Human Factors International found that 80% of software life-cycle costs occur during the maintenance phase. Okay, cars aren’t as expensive to maintain as software, but you get the point. Well written software is designed to be updated, changed, bitch-slapped or whatever. It should take it like a man. There are real financial consequences when code takes a long time to update. It can even cancel a project. What I have noticed over the years is regardless of what I am told; I always end up having to go back into something to make edits. As important as this is, there is one more reason why the quality matters.

If an engine is well built, you can put it in several other cars. Good reusable code works the same way. If it’s done well, it can be placed in many applications. There is a business law that states the cost of products and services go down over time. It’s called the experience curve. Businesses find cheaper and quicker ways of getting the work done. When a cheaper way to do business is found, a company charges less to increase volume, or operates with higher profit margins. Either way competitors are adversely affected. Beautiful code can become that competitive advantage to manage the curve.

It’s all about money. It usually is. Ugly code may look like the practical choice. It’s an easy solution when you become defined by deadlines. Some programmers work that way, but surviving isn’t thriving. For businesses to grow and stay competitive they have to have a culture that prizes beautiful code.