Clean code is as much about the processes and principles that foster it as it is about syntax. No matter how perfect and beautiful our code is in isolation, it is usually written as part of a project, alongside a team, and managed by fallible people and fallible processes. And only by seeing and understanding these fallibilities can we hope to prevent or avoid them.

We are all taking on more challenging work nowadays. The days of JavaScript being limited to humble brochure websites with snazzy navigation rollovers are long gone. The creators of the web have been tasked with building ever more ambitious projects. As the technological tower of abstraction grows to new heights, the complexity of these projects will only increase. Due to this, if we are to truly write clean code, we must think broadly about this complexity. We must go beyond our code bases and consider the context of the team and the organization that we work in.

Casting management as an enemy may appear to suggest that managers themselves are blameworthy, but this is not the case. What we'll discover in this section is that it is individual cultural practices that make it challenging to ship clean code. Among these is the pressure to ship, bad metrics, and a lack of ownership.