What Is Clean Code?

There are probably as many definitions as there are programmers. I choose one of them that is the most valuable to me.

Clean code can be read, and enhanced by a developer other than its original author. It has unit and acceptance tests. It has meaningful names. It provides one way rather than many ways for doing one thing. It has minimal dependencies, which are explicitly defined, and provides a clear and minimal API. Code should be literate since depending on the language, not all necessary information can be expressed clearly in code alone.

-- “Big” Dave Thomas, founder of OTI, godfather of the Eclipse strategy --

The code is clean if it can be understood easily by everyone on the team. Clean code can be read and enhanced by a developer other than its original author. With understandability comes readability, changeability, extensibility, and maintainability.