> Bad code doesn't work. > It's very hard, and maybe impossible, to determine if a novel "works". I wonder if there is a an assumption here about what it mean

> Bad code doesn't work. > It's very hard, and maybe impossible, to determine if a novel "works". I wonder if there is a an assumption here about what it means to "work" vs to be "bad". Psychologically, maybe it's helpful to view each person as their own interpreter, and there is more variation there compared to (e.g.) a specific python interpreter. But even in python I could write totally not-python code, and have the python interpreter run it (e.g. by writing a codec). And I could write beautiful code that throws an error, and have a person debug it for <some_purpose>, and in meeting that purpose it might be working. I think the challenge here is that "work" is being defined in a narrow, technical sense for code, but is recognized in a much broader, social/cognitive sense, for novels!