# Clean Code by Robert C. Martin

31 Hacker News commenters recommended Clean Code by Robert C. Martin and 87 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a source of naming and function-structure ideas, especially for newer programmers and legacy code. Critics say its rules are taken too far and its abstractions hurt performance and optimization.

## Why people recommend it

- Helpful for early developers learning structure (2 comments): "helpful for early developers who need some structure, but harmful to late-stage developers who adopt it as dogma" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49170102)) "when I read it as a newbie it was really helpful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49169882))
- Useful parts, skip the rest (2 comments): "Clean Code has some useful things, but it is a collection of one person's judgements (some good, some bad)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49170294)) "didn't think it was mind blowing, but I used the parts that made sense and left the parts that didn't" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48751903))

## What people warn about

- Rules taken to extremes (3 comments): "his reasoning, that 6 lines is too long, was a reflection of his desire to get every function as short as possible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46487318)) "The examples in Clean Code show that Uncle Bob himself misunderstood heuristics as strict rules that are to be taken to the extreme." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48250833)) "famous for making bad suggestions and producing unreadable code with too many functions just for the sake of following its rules" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46076451))
- Abstractions hurt performance and optimization (2 comments): "it is empirically worse for performance, and that trade off matters for many use cases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171769)) "the amount of abstractions Uncle Bob advises makes it just too easy to make the code extremely hard to optimize later" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750530))
- Harmful for beginners or dogmatic use (3 comments): "i'd argue it is even more harmful for beginns, i remember we had to code a chess program and seeing students getting stuck on OOP stuff rather than actually solve the problems." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49177648)) "People who read Clean Code as their first programming but and made that their identity have been the bane of my existence as a programmer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47411462)) "helpful for early developers who need some structure, but harmful to late-stage developers who adopt it as dogma" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49170102))
- Author misapplies his own advice (2 comments): "Mr. Martin honestly just doesn't seem very good at implementing his ideas and getting the benefits that he anticipates from them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493917)) "he doesn't seem to have been very good at implementing them, and he often does so in ways that contradict other principles" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48282993))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom](https://hackerapproved.com/p/crafting-interpreters.md): 60 recommend
- [The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pragmatic-programmer.md): 28 recommend
- [How to Design Programs by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt and Krishnamurthi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/how-to-design-programs.md): 18 recommend
- [Mastering Emacs by Mickey Petersen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mastering-emacs.md): 17 recommend
- [Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/working-effectively-with-legacy-code.md): 16 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1282668315?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9781282668317) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Clean Code by Robert C. Martin", https://hackerapproved.com/p/clean-code/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).