4 ms·

Writing is a great metaphor: there aren't any hard-and-fast rules and there's certainly a subjective quality to it... but also, some writing is clearly better a

Writing is a great metaphor: there aren't any hard-and-fast rules and there's certainly a subjective quality to it... but also, some writing is clearly better and some writing is clearly worse. Maybe there is no such thing as "good" writing because writing can be "good" in different ways or because we can never fully define what "good" means, but that doesn't mean that all writing is equal or that "everything is a tradeoff"—and, like you said, it doesn't mean we need to deeply analyze every piece of writing to draw useful conclusions about it. My view is that while there is definitely a subjective aspect to quality—whether in code or in writing—a larger portion is objective, just hard to formalize or quantify. Just because we can't measure something directly or because we can't all agree about it in every instance doesn't mean it's subjective. There are a lot of things we can't know exactly but that are still objective, so why not writing or code quality as well?

RangerScience 5y ago
> There are a lot of things we can't know exactly but that are still objective Hmmmmmm not sure about that. AFAIK anything that we either can't measure objectively, or don't yet know how to measure objectively, is a subjective measurement, even if that measurement is subject to an objective apparatus (observer effect experiments; the measurement is subject to the circumstances of measurement) Totally open to being wrong and you being right tho. Any examples come to mind for you?
beebmam 5y ago
> some writing is clearly better and some writing is clearly worse This is a presumption, and one that I don't share Like music and other forms of art, different styles appeal differently to different audiences. Many people find the language that 8 year olds write in to be terrible, and some people find it endearing and honest and meaningful. Software is no different in my opinion Audience always matters
loriverkutya 5y ago
Writing would be a great metaphore only if you write the code alone and when you declared it finished, you never need to come back and add new things/remove old things or fix bugs in it.
- dtech 5y ago
  I don't see how that invalidates the metaphor. For any version of code you can evaluate clean-ness. Writing is also not immutable, professional authors make hundreds of versions before publishing. Of course books get 1 major release. So while ability to maintain and change is much more important in software, that is by far not the only factor for clean-ness, and I'd say hardly the most important.
johnchristopher 5y ago
> Writing is a great metaphor: there aren't any hard-and-fast rules and there's certainly a subjective quality to it... but also, some writing is clearly better and some writing is clearly worse. Maybe there is no such thing as "good" writing because writing can be "good" in different ways or because we can never fully define what "good" means There are different writing styles (and so guide styles associated) for different objectives. Eg, journalism, with a pyramid model designed and refined to ease the process of assimilating information which is different from the playscript style model designed to give general instructions on how to flesh out and enact events. Both these styles (I intentionally chose for their more obvious rules and usage) have different hard-and-fast rules and applying one instead of the other wouldn't work. Now, there will be a subjective quality but there are also objective qualities to writings produced with these styles (structure, count of words, choice of wording for description, timeline of events reported, etc.). Now, of course regarding novels, storytelling, the newyorker, writings that are intended to be read, alone, to tell a story, to convey more than facts and the most objective description of reality yada yada. And then there are technical manuals. I think code is a technical manual for two kind of audiences: humans and computers, so compromises are made and rules for clarity and brevity can be layout.

RangerScience 5y ago

> There are a lot of things we can't know exactly but that are still objective Hmmmmmm not sure about that. AFAIK anything that we either can't measure objectively, or don't yet know how to measure objectively, is a subjective measurement, even if that measurement is subject to an objective apparatus (observer effect experiments; the measurement is subject to the circumstances of measurement) Totally open to being wrong and you being right tho. Any examples come to mind for you?

beebmam 5y ago

> some writing is clearly better and some writing is clearly worse This is a presumption, and one that I don't share Like music and other forms of art, different styles appeal differently to different audiences. Many people find the language that 8 year olds write in to be terrible, and some people find it endearing and honest and meaningful. Software is no different in my opinion Audience always matters

loriverkutya 5y ago

Writing would be a great metaphore only if you write the code alone and when you declared it finished, you never need to come back and add new things/remove old things or fix bugs in it.

dtech 5y ago
I don't see how that invalidates the metaphor. For any version of code you can evaluate clean-ness. Writing is also not immutable, professional authors make hundreds of versions before publishing. Of course books get 1 major release. So while ability to maintain and change is much more important in software, that is by far not the only factor for clean-ness, and I'd say hardly the most important.

johnchristopher 5y ago

> Writing is a great metaphor: there aren't any hard-and-fast rules and there's certainly a subjective quality to it... but also, some writing is clearly better and some writing is clearly worse. Maybe there is no such thing as "good" writing because writing can be "good" in different ways or because we can never fully define what "good" means There are different writing styles (and so guide styles associated) for different objectives. Eg, journalism, with a pyramid model designed and refined to ease the process of assimilating information which is different from the playscript style model designed to give general instructions on how to flesh out and enact events. Both these styles (I intentionally chose for their more obvious rules and usage) have different hard-and-fast rules and applying one instead of the other wouldn't work. Now, there will be a subjective quality but there are also objective qualities to writings produced with these styles (structure, count of words, choice of wording for description, timeline of events reported, etc.). Now, of course regarding novels, storytelling, the newyorker, writings that are intended to be read, alone, to tell a story, to convey more than facts and the most objective description of reality yada yada. And then there are technical manuals. I think code is a technical manual for two kind of audiences: humans and computers, so compromises are made and rules for clarity and brevity can be layout.