Literals represent something. Magic numbers are a form of literal. This insight goes at least as far back as the book Structured Design by Edward Yourdon and Larry L. Constantine (from 1979!), on page 94. The number 79 can truly represent the result of 80-1, which in turn can express two other concepts:

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As soon as you write a piece of software, you “architect” it. Can’t get around that; but if you do not do it consciously, the resulting structure may not be great. Taking ownership of the process is important to change the result and create maintainable software. When we write/architect software, we worry about two things:

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