There are some useful ideas here, and public shaming per se probably isn't the answer. But publicly talking about bad code, and the properties of code that mak

There are some useful ideas here, and public shaming per se probably isn't the answer. But publicly talking about bad code, and the properties of code that makes it bad, is an important way to socialize what makes good code, plus the meta fact that code quality is important. To the extent that the aphorism about writing bad code is true, I think it's just another way of saying that people's code improves with their coding experience. I really don't think you need to write bad code _in order_ to learn to write good code. It's hard to know for sure, but I think the most positive influence on my code quality was _reading_ lots of very good code, not having written bad code. (It's the same with my writing, too.) [Edited for clarity, ironically.]