If you can't tell the difference between decisions made by a poor engineer or decisions made by a good engineer, then it's very possible you're a poor engineer.

If you can't tell the difference between decisions made by a poor engineer or decisions made by a good engineer, then it's very possible you're a poor engineer. I shit you not I once saw the following in an actual codebase. var len = Int32.Parse(myString.Length.ToString()); I can maybe understand that code evolving to that over time, no way in hell is it a good engineer who put the final adjustment in and thought that was fine. Don't even get me started on systems that are overly stringly typed. What the other poster said is absolutely true, a good design can turn bad if it doesn't adjust as the business changes. Too many developers think the point is that the initial design should survive first contact or it was bad code, but that thinking is too static. As Mike Tyson likes to say, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. There's nothing wrong with evolving a design over time, and doing so helps others to be able to recognize good code from bad code.