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What is “good taste” in software engineering?

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Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#21

Post by necklesspen »

When used in the domain of fashion "good taste" describes someone who has a unique way of selecting clothes that just mesh well together - clothes that by themselves independently are meaningless, no matter their make or quality, but when combined together create a powerful effect - much greater than the sum of their parts.

I was hoping the article would go in that direction - what subjective combination is a software engineer deciding on that you can argue is truly a matter of taste and not just a technical decision about a trade-off.

I would say this this article itself may be an example of bad taste. It meanders across a couple of disparate topics in software engineering, independently each section is competently written but as a whole they really don't sell the "look" the article was aiming for.

(I don't mean to discourage future writing by the author - I think it's a potentially excellent choice of topic. I'm just giving my two cents here on the execution.)

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#22

Post by whalee »

gyulai wrote: post #9

Lecturing on "good taste" is a huge red flag for narcissism. "Taste" implies subjectivity. Pairing it with "good" is presupposing something along the lines of "my subjective evaluation of things is superior to yours", or "my subjective choices are superior to yours".

Not at all. Vanishingly few things during the development process of a novel thing have truly objective measures. The world is far too complex. We all act and exist primarily in a probabilistic environment. A subjective evaluation is not so different than simply making a prediction about how something will turn out. If your predictions based on subjective measures turn out to be more correct than others, your subjectivity is objectively better.

Hence the author's main point: a good taste is one that fits with the needs of the project. If you can't align your own presuppositions with the actualities of the work you're doing then obviously your subjective measures going forward will not be very good.

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#23

Post by zx8080 »

mojuba wrote: post #20

> Is the software easy to take in at a glance and to onboard new engineers to? This is not as easy as it sounds. Who are those "new engineers", juniors? 10 years of experience? 30 years? What's your requirement? "Readability" is such a wildcard, with a whole range of acceptable levels from zero to infinity. Readability is a non-concept really. Maxwell's famous equations are readable to some and absolutely impenetrabl…

Theere are two quite a widespread classes of not readable code:

Some code is not readable by _anyone_. That's not readable code.

Some code is readable by its author only (be it AI or a human). That's also not readable one.

Saying readability is not a concept is really strange.

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#24

Post by jackblemming »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #18

I would say limiting the braggadocio is important to "good taste" as well. I interviewed once for a dev role on the email team for a very large free software company you've heard of. The team's egos were so large I could hardly fit in the room. "Oh! I see you wrote the control system for a nuclear power plant. That's cute, I once inverted a tree data structure!" or "I see you wrote the modular exponentiator that was…

Your phrasing makes it sound like you’re playing the same childish game they are; you just rank yourself higher than them.

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#25

Post by ibash »

mojuba wrote: post #20

> Is the software easy to take in at a glance and to onboard new engineers to? This is not as easy as it sounds. Who are those "new engineers", juniors? 10 years of experience? 30 years? What's your requirement? "Readability" is such a wildcard, with a whole range of acceptable levels from zero to infinity. Readability is a non-concept really. Maxwell's famous equations are readable to some and absolutely impenetrabl…

I disagree. The ability of someone to read code doesn't grow exponentially, after a few years of experience everyone hits the same plateau. More years of experience does not mean you can understand more complex code.

That is to say, if you target "readable to the majority of engineers with 3-4 years of experience, without them getting confused" then you've hit the mark.

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#26

Post by bubblyworld »

bob1029 wrote: post #16

> In my view, your engineering taste is composed of the set of engineering values you find most important. For instance: Strange how absent the customer or underlying business always is in this discussion. I've seen a LOT of software that could have literally just been a spreadsheet on a file share or a simple SQL ETL job. When reviewing the actual business requirements, we will often find that we don't even need a g…

Can you provide examples of software that should have literally been a spreadsheet or an ETL? Not to call you out specifically but this feels like "I could have written that in a weekend". Personally whenever I have felt that way about a project it turned out I was just missing 95% of the business context/domain knowledge (part of the reason I think rewrites are a bad idea - chesterton's fence).

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#27

Post by laurent_du »

jackblemming wrote: post #24
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #18

I would say limiting the braggadocio is important to "good taste" as well. I interviewed once for a dev role on the email team for a very large free software company you've heard of. The team's egos were so large I could hardly fit in the room. "Oh! I see you wrote the control system for a nuclear power plant. That's cute, I once inverted a tree data structure!" or "I see you wrote the modular exponentiator that was…

Your phrasing makes it sound like you’re playing the same childish game they are; you just rank yourself higher than them.

There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is not that they were playing a childish game, it's that they were over-estimating their own abilities by a lot. It's ok to acknowledge you are good at something if you are, in fact, good at this thing.

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#29

Post by [deleted] »

zx8080 wrote: post #23
mojuba wrote: post #20

> Is the software easy to take in at a glance and to onboard new engineers to? This is not as easy as it sounds. Who are those "new engineers", juniors? 10 years of experience? 30 years? What's your requirement? "Readability" is such a wildcard, with a whole range of acceptable levels from zero to infinity. Readability is a non-concept really. Maxwell's famous equations are readable to some and absolutely impenetrabl…

Theere are two quite a widespread classes of not readable code: Some code is not readable by _anyone_. That's not readable code. Some code is readable by its author only (be it AI or a human). That's also not readable one. Saying readability is not a concept is really strange.

[deleted]

Re: What is “good taste” in software engineering?

#30

Post by laurent_du »

gyulai wrote: post #9

Lecturing on "good taste" is a huge red flag for narcissism. "Taste" implies subjectivity. Pairing it with "good" is presupposing something along the lines of "my subjective evaluation of things is superior to yours", or "my subjective choices are superior to yours".

Subjectivity is fine when it is backed by experience and knowledge. If anything, the narcissist perspective is the one where you claim expert opinion doesn't matter because it's all subjective and it hurts your feelings when people criticize your work (or your "taste").
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