"Clean Code" a Timeless Truth OR a Myth We Keep Telling Ourselves?

Kevlin Henney and Daniel Terhorst-North take on one of the most enduring, and controversial, ideas in software engineering: clean code. Since the publication of Robert C. Martin’s (Uncle Bob) Clean Code, generations of software developers and software engineers have been taught that “cleanliness” in code is the gold standard. But what does clean code really mean in modern software development? And does it still hold up in today’s complex, fast-moving systems? Kevlin and Daniel explore how the idea of clean code evolved — from Bob Martin, Kent Beck, and even earlier thinkers in computer science — and challenge whether rigid rules and dogma actually help developers write better code, or whether they sometimes make systems harder to understand and change. This conversation goes beyond style guides and naming conventions to focus on what truly matters: How code supports human understanding - Why habitability may be more useful than “cleanliness” - How context, scale, and team dynamics chan