Re: What databases have taught me

On 2006-07-08 15:18:17 -0500, "topmind" <topmind_at_technologist.com> said:

> After thousands of debates and failed attempts to find objective
> metrics beyond execution speed and matching stated external
> requirements, I am leaning toward the "art" viewpoint. One man's
> spehgetti code is another man's masterpeice. Just because I find it a
> flaming tangled mess does not mean the next guy will.

While it is certainly true that beauty is subjective, it is astounding how much agreement there is over things that are "beautiful". Good software is beautiful, and good programmers pursue beauty.

Yes, it's true that sometimes two people will disagree about beauty. But there is a difference between debating whether something is beautiful, and debating about whether something is a mess.

Most of us can recognize a mess when we see it. Inconsistent variable and function names, misplaced responsibilities. Functions that have more than one responsibility and that share responsibilities with other functions, etc, etc. And most of us can recognize nicely partitioned code with carefully thought through names, and modules of approachable size.

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