As I am reading a thread on WorseThanFailure (Our Dirty Little Secret), I see a post by “VGR” that states that companies do not recognize “good software”, but rather “finished” or “not finished.”  This is an interesting point.

But a question I would like answered is this – what exactly is good software?  How does one decide that this bit of software is good and that one is bad?  More to the point, since software starts with source code, how do you decide that this code is good and that code is bad?

I have grappled with this question myself, as I am sure others have as well.  I believe I know what good code is.  My education, experience and wisdom are my guides.  But what I believe to be good code is different from what another developer believes to be good code.  Another less seasoned developer may think something else, just as a more seasoned developer might.  So who is correct?

I believe that part of the problem with software today is that there are no common (or otherwise shared) standards for what constitutes good software (or good code which is where good software starts), excluding obvious things like “does not crash” or “does not corrupt data.”

So what exactly makes good code?  Is it…

• Code that just works, or code that works well?  And what is the difference, if any?
• Code that is Declarative, Imperative/Procedural, or just well commented?  Is it a combination of the two or all three?  And to that point, what exactly does “well commented” mean, anyway?
• Code that uses encapsulation as much as possible, because (of course) encapsulation is “a good thing”, or is it code that selectively decides when it is advantageous to do so?
• ??? What else?  I am sure that many other developers have other criteria…

For each of the items above, you can find developers that will argue for one thing or the other.  Worse, you can also find academics with relatively little to no real-world development experience doing the same, cultivating other future developers with the same thoughts!  This is good or bad depending on your point of view.

So how do we solve the problem?  I am not sure that it can be solved.  Software development is both art and science, and that art part is the killer.  Art is very subjective, and one person’s Picasso is another person’s misaligned jigsaw puzzle.  We may have to learn to all just get along here.