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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

> pretends like there's a conspiracy among employers against good code.

It's funny, on this site I've been chided several times when I talk about iterating on quality. People are under incredible pressure to make deadlines, and they externalize that with a "if it works once, ship it and never look back until it breaks" attitude. Is it an employer conspiracy against quality? No, that would be ridiculous. Is a derisive attitude towards quality an immediate and obvious consequence of focusing on tangible and immediate delivery above all else? Yes, of course it is.

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> when I talk about iterating on quality

What does iterating on quality even mean? I challenge you to define this term in a way that is clear and objective. I guess the whole point that I'm trying to make is that "quality" is never well-defined, and thus is basically an arbitrary goalpost used by mediocre engineers to throw a wrench in things and justify their existence.

> I challenge you to define this term in a way that is clear and objective.

Thanks, but no thanks. It's highly context dependent. Performance can be a goal. Simplicity (rather, lack of useless complexity) can be a goal. Maintainability can be a goal. Generality can be a goal. Understandability can be a goal. There's a sweet spot where brevity can be a benefit to those goals, beyond which it turns to tortuous code-golf. Taken to an extreme, any of the goals above can become pathological. With experience, you should know the difference between shoddy, slapdash or tortuous code and well-written code.

> Thanks, but no thanks

> With experience, you should know the difference between shoddy, slapdash or tortuous code and well-written code

You've just successfully proven my point. By refusing to clearly define what "quality" means, you can now arbitrarily draw the line for quality anywhere you want any time you want. Any time you feel like you're not feeling important enough, you can throw a wrench into the process, yell about "quality," then complain on your blog when your manager/higher-up inevitably overrides you. If you ultimately want to provide value with your work, this isn't how you do it.

If I were speaking of a specific codebase, it would have a specific purpose, for which I could prioritize the many aspects of "quality." But I'm speaking in generality, and I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to pretty much anything in life.

> Any time you feel like you're not feeling important enough, you can throw a wrench into the process, yell about "quality," then complain on your blog when your manager/higher-up inevitably overrides you.

You don't know me, then. It sounds like you work with petty-minded hobgoblins. I apologize for their existence. And for the record, I don't feel important and I generally distrust people who strive to.

> If you ultimately want to provide value with your work, this isn't how you do it.

I agree, posting to HN is strictly value-negative.

It took Robert Pirsig a trip into insanity but he did it. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is just that: an iteration on quality.

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