The beauty of Software (to myself)

         Next to my family, software is my passion. It is a medium in which I try to create beauty. The beauty of software is in it's function, in it's internal structure, and in the way in which it is created by a team. To a user, a program with just the right features presented through an intuitive and simple interface, is beautiful. To a software designer, an internal structure that is partitioned in a simple and intuitive manner, and that minimizes internal coupling, is beautiful. To developers and managers, a motivated team of developers making significant progress every week, and producing defect-free code, is beautiful. There is beauty on all these levels, and they are all part of the topic of this book.
　　 How do software developers learn how to create this beauty? In this book I teach the principles, patterns, and practices that can help software developers take the first steps towards beautiful programs, designs, and teams. In these pages we explore basic design principle, common patterns in the structure of a software design, and a set of practices that can help a team knit itself into a functioning whole. Since this book is about software development, it contains a lot of code. The principles, patterns, and practices that this book teaches are learned most effectively by carefully studying that code.
　　 Our world needs software -- lots of software. Fifty years ago software was something that ran in a few big and expensive machines. Thirty years ago it was something that ran in most companies and industrial settings. Now there is software running in our cell phones, watches, appliances, automobiles,toys, and tools. And need for new and better software never stops. As our civilization grows and expands, as developing nations build their infrastructures, as developed nations strive to achieve ever greater efficiencies, the need for more and more software continues to increase. It would be a great shame if, in all that software, there was no beauty.
　　 We know that software can be ugly. We know that it can be hard to use,unreliable, and carelessly structured. We know that there are software systems whose tangled and careless internal structures make them expensive and difficult to change. We know that there are software systems that present their features through an awkward and cumbersome interface. We know that there are software systems that crash and misbehave. These are ugly systems. Unfortunately, as a profession, software developers tend to create more ugly systems than beautiful ones. If you are reading this book, then you are someone who wants to create beauty and not ugliness.
　　There is a secret that the best software developers know. Beauty is cheaper than ugliness. Beauty is faster than ugliness. A beautiful software system can be built and maintained in less time, and for less money, than an ugly one. Novice software developers don't understand this. They think that they have to do everything fast and quick. They think that beauty is impractical. No! By doing things fast and quick, they make messes that make the software stiff, and hard to understand. Beautiful systems are flexible and easy to understand. Building them and maintaining them is a joy. It is ugliness that is impractical. Ugliness will slow you down and make your software expensive and brittle. Beautiful systems cost the least to build and maintain, and are delivered soonest.
　　 I hope you enjoy this book. I hope you learn to take as much pride and joy in the creation of beautiful software that I do. If this book can show you just an inkling of that joy, motivate you to feel just the beginnings of that pride, and provide just a spark of appreciation for that beauty, then it has more than accomplished my goal for it.