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Taste is malleable and relative. One can even entertain different notions of taste. I personally have at least two – "understandable" and "performant" – and t
by colanderman 10y ago
Taste is malleable and relative. One can even entertain different notions of taste. I personally have at least two – "understandable" and "performant" – and they aren't always (but sometimes are) exclusive of each other.
I suspect Linus's "taste", given Linux's problem domain, tuned to some combination of performant + testable + reviewable + portable. In the example given, Linus's rewrite meets these requirements; hence his assertion that it is in better taste.
- ant6n 10y agoI feel at this point, the notion of 'good taste' has become even more ill-defined, something very personal. Then the notion is not very useful as a coding guideline.
- aero142 10y agoThere isn't a domain where taste isn't personal. It's always a blend of art and science. Just because you can't define it exactly though, doesn't mean you can't get closer to it by working at it.