TLDR: there’s no universal criteria for code quality. Imagine you have 5 programmers. #1 works in a web development company, writing a CRUD web app in SQL, PHP

TLDR: there’s no universal criteria for code quality. Imagine you have 5 programmers. #1 works in a web development company, writing a CRUD web app in SQL, PHP and JavaScript. #2 is coding C and developing an embedded firmware for a PC component. Also works on the driver for that component in the Linux kernel. #3 writes some COBOL for a half-century old system running in a bank. #4 works in a game studio developing a level editor for yet to be announced videogame. #5 is a researcher working in a university, mostly writing Mathlab but occasionally some Python and R. The ideal simplicity/correctness/performance tradeoff is totally different between the five. Just like any other tradeoff, or generalization, or methodology, or approach. All 5 are writing code, but the software they’re creating have totally different requirements, expectations, lifetime and budget. I never saw articles generalizing stuff across all engineers: aircraft, biomedical, marine, telecommunications, etc. However, I saw many articles, this included, that tries to generalize across all software development.