It turns out that style matters in programming for the same reason that it matters in writing. It makes for better reading.
Douglas CrockfordIn JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders.
Douglas CrockfordFeatures have a specification cost, a design cost, and a development cost. There is a testing cost and a reliability cost. ... Features have a documentation cost. Every feature adds pages to the manual increasing training costs.
Douglas CrockfordWe see a lot of feature-driven product design in which the cost of features is not properly accounted. Features can have a negative value to customers because they make the products more difficult to understand and use. We are finding that people like products that just work. It turns out that designs that just work are much harder to produce that designs that assemble long lists of features.
Douglas Crockford