Write Maintainable Code

Simple habits to avoid frustration and confusion down the road

Every developer has felt the pain of revisiting code they once wrote. You open the file, read a few lines, and immediately wonder: "What was I thinking?"

It’s not that the code doesn’t work. It’s that it’s hard to read, difficult to change, and full of decisions that no longer make sense—even to the person who made them.

These moments of frustration don’t happen by accident. They’re usually the result of shortcuts we take under pressure: rushing a feature, skipping proper naming, choosing the wrong abstraction, or trying to reinvent a wheel we didn’t need to.

If you want to avoid these kinds of problems later, here are a few practices I’ve started following to write code that is easier to maintain, understand, and extend.

1. Name things clearly for long-term readability

Clear naming is one of the best investments you can make in your code. It costs nothing, but it makes everything easier to read and reason about.

Bad names force your brain to hold more context. Good names do the explaining for you.

Here’s what helps:

• Read open source code. Pay attention to how experienced devs name things.
• Build your vocabulary. The broader your language, the easier it is to name things well.
• Revisit your own code. Look at what you wrote last month. What’s confusing? What makes sense?
• Start writing more. Writing clarifies thinking. It improves how you name things too.

Good names are just the start, but they set the tone for the rest of the code.

2. Avoid overengineering and keep it maintainable

Every abstraction adds complexity. Before you introduce one, ask yourself:

• Why do I need this?
• What’s the actual benefit?
• How much mental overhead does it add?
• Will I understand this quickly when I come back to it later?

Design patterns and clever architecture have their place. But often, a simple solution with a few repeated lines is easier to understand, maintain, and debug than something abstract and elegant on the surface but confusing underneath.

When in doubt, keep it boring and obvious.

3. Leverage frameworks for scalable, maintainable systems

You don’t get bonus points for building your own framework from scratch.

There’s a movement among some developers to avoid frameworks in the name of “purity” or “control.” But in most cases, using a well-supported, battle-tested framework saves you time, prevents bugs, and helps you ship faster.

If you're building something real, don't waste your time gluing together libraries just to avoid Laravel, Rails, or Django. Let the framework handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on what matters.

You can always break out of the framework later if you get that far.

Final Thought

Every line of code is a message to your future self or the next person who has to work on it. The question is: will they understand it?

You don't have to write perfect code. But you can write clear, intentional code that’s easier to live with and easier to maintain.

These habits—clear naming, restrained design, and good tooling—aren’t glamorous, but they work. They help you move faster, stay focused, and avoid that sinking feeling when your past self leaves behind a mess.

Maintainable code isn’t just about following best practices. It’s about empathy—for yourself and the people who will live in your codebase after you.