But there is agreed-upon tasty food, so there is some kind of intrinsic, shared meaning of the word, which is also true of code. It's not objective, but there

But there is agreed-upon tasty food, so there is some kind of intrinsic, shared meaning of the word, which is also true of code. It's not objective, but there is a consensus among peers. Honestly, it is like art, but these analogies kind of fall flat since we're not all "artists" in the traditional sense, usually. The reality is, for a painter, there are things that come close to objectively "good" works, a lot more so than for the layperson, and an experienced painter can walk you through all the different "types" of "good" art, just like an experienced coder can walk you through all the different "types" of "good" code. Just because we can't write down in a few pithy words what "clean code" is doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just further confirms something we've all known for a long time now; code is art.