Good flow is a product of good coding. A program should flow like a river, taking functions from external sources and bringing them together to form the final sea of code. But isn’t the sea too big to view all at once. Yes but even the sea follows a flow that can be easily followed.
Without a consistent flow the coder gets lost, and thereafter the flow loses its way. The flow must be followed constantly. Any deviation leads to chaos and confusion. Think about all the times you’ve looked through someones code and thought, “wow, that’s ugly code, what was the developer smoking when they wrote that”. That is the sign of loss of flow.
Flow doesn’t simply mean other people being able to follow your code. It’s more about the way the code is written. From proper flow comes proper understanding and maintainability of the code. So what is good flow. Unfortunately it’s hard to describe, which will no doubt make you think “Aha, another misguided coder, think’s he knows all but knows nothing”. But good flow really is hard to desribe, it’s like trying to describe a painting by van gogh to a blind person. How do yopu desribe the winderful use of colour, the subtle shades, the shadows, the over all effect of the aubject itself. Coding is an art form, it’s not disciplined like engineering, it’s not as rigirous as a science, it’s controlled by the will of the coder, his understanding of the language and the problem to be solved, and yet the beauty in the code comes from the heart of the gifted coder, transcending thelanguage, the tools, and becoming one with the code. That’s good, pure flow.
