In my first post about what constitutes “good code,” I claimed we were dealing with a complex question. This is why I distrust short answers.

So many competing concerns must be balanced to achieve goodness:

• Testability
• Maintainability
• Short-term revenue pressures
• Long-term strategic value
• Performance (many aspects)
• Scalability (up, down, across)
• Ease of use
• Supportability
• Conceptual integrity
• Alignment with the skills, temperament, interests, and tools of the team that owns it
• Cost vs. benefit (for some problems, quick and dirty is definitely “right”)
• Simplicity (separation of concerns)

More items undoubtedly belong on the list. Quite a balancing act!

Someone’s got this “balance” thing down! Photo credit: joãokẽdal (Flickr).

Action Item

Pick a module, application, or subsystem that you know well, and grade its code according to how much its coders emphasize a few different dimensions (e.g., performance, testability, scalability, ease of use). Do you like the balance? Are any attributes being neglected?