“If You Can’t Do This, Stop Coding” is a rather impassioned directive to learn how to code clearly and correctly, with code clarity being a prime delivery aspect.

Writing good code means writing code that other programmers can easily understand.

Code is essentially a set of instructions for the computer to execute. Any set of good instructions should be clearly defined in detail so that it can be understood by a reader.

Why should code be any different? With overcomplicated code, no one would be able to comprehend the instructions you are giving to the computer.

The truth is, you can still have a great program even with bad code. But the issue of complex code lies not with the final product, but with the development.

Suffering-Oriented Programming has much the same point:

• Make it work
• Make it pretty
• Make it fast

… and in that order, which is usually not that difficult, because pretty code (i.e., readable code) is easier to optimize than labyrynthine code that nobody can understand.