{"id":112,"date":"2017-06-02T11:40:41","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T10:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smharter.com\/blog\/?p=112"},"modified":"2024-09-26T12:19:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T11:19:27","slug":"an-holistic-view-on-code-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smharter.ai\/blog\/2017\/06\/02\/an-holistic-view-on-code-quality\/","title":{"rendered":"A holistic view on code quality that matters for the business as well as for IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated on Sep 2024<\/strong>

if you were spending your own money to pay software engineers to improve the quality of service\/product\u2019s codebase, what would you rather have?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen software developers arguing passionately and endlessly about trivial topics such as spaces vs tabs (coding style standards) without coming to a useful conclusion. Code quality is a very controversial topic indeed, but I\u2019m sure you won\u2019t pay with your own monely from your holiday money pot for those arguments!<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, in a quite useful turn of events, in the last 15 years, the agile movement contributed enormously to expand the understanding of quality in IT.
Now our quest for quality can count on patterns (PoEAA, GoF, GRASP, Hexagonal Architecture, Asyc patterns, etc), principles (SOLID, Demeter, Simple Design Rules, Dependency Inversion, CAP Theorem, Promise Theory, etc), heuristics of good and bad design (loose coupling, high cohesion, rigidity, fragility, etc), diagnostics (metrics such as cyclomatic complexity, Sandi Metz\u2019s TRUE , etc), and practices (described in the previous post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

On the other hand, that understanding expanded so quickly, that the vast majority of the industry has not caught up yet. Most are still at the imitation phase.
Indeed, even in recent years, I\u2019ve seen some business people systematically cutting down quality up to a point of bringing over time\u00a0 the project or product to its knees, and I\u2019ve seen some technical people asking for time and resources to improve quality and then failing to produce the promised benefits. I\u2019m sure you can also recall some epic IT failures from the news. You would not want that either, for your money.<\/p>\n

Mastering those patterns, principles, heuristics, diagnostics, and practices – software craftsmanship – is the best way we know today to pursue the quality of the code. But it is not the whole answer! They all are a means to an end.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the end goal of code quality, and what is the meaning of code quality for the business?<\/strong>
Here are a few examples of end goals of code quality that support key tangible and beneficial business needs\/wants:<\/p>\n