> The real problem is that "clean code" is completely arbitrary and if you ask 10 software engineers you'll get at least 5 different answers because this really boils down to preferences.
I disagree. I'll take a bet that given 10 experienced software engineers (we can define what this means -- title, years of experience, familiarity with language idioms, etc.) they'll mostly agree on samples A, B, C, ... of code if it's "clean" or not.
Code doesn't have to follow my preferred design pattern to be clean. The bar is don't be shitty, and I'll know shitty code when I see it[1].