by Rob Pike, February 21, 1989: "Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style was an important and rightly influential book. But sometimes I feel its concise rules were taken as a cookbook approach to good style instead of the succinct expression of a philosophy they were meant to be. If the book claims that variable names should be chosen meaningfully, doesn't it then follow that variables whose names are small essays on their use are even better?... What follows is a set of short essays that collectively encourage a philosophy of clarity in programming rather than giving hard rules. I don't expect you to agree with all of them, because they are opinion and opinions change with the times"

by Rob Pike, February 21, 1989: "Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style was an important and rightly influential book. But sometimes I feel its concise rules were taken as a cookbook approach to good style instead of the succinct expression of a philosophy they were meant to be. If the book claims that variable names should be chosen meaningfully, doesn't it then follow that variables whose names are small essays on their use are even better?... What follows is a set of short essays that collectively encourage a philosophy of clarity in programming rather than giving hard rules. I don't expect you to agree with all of them, because they are opinion and opinions change with the times"