publish: true gemini: true tags:

• software_engineering
• linux_philosophy created: ‘2026-05-04 14:40’ last_modified: ‘2026-05-04 14:40:00’ status: evergreen confidence: fact

Code is read far more often than it is written

Source code is primarily a medium of communication between developers, and only secondarily a set of instructions for the compiler. This emphasis on human readability is why Plain text guarantees data longevity.¹

Footnotes

1. Martin, R. C. (2008). Clean Code. ↩