Steven D'Aprano wrote:
(a) Can we objectively judge the goodness of code, or is it subjective?
(b) Is goodness of code quantitative, or is it qualitative?
Yes, I'm not really talking about numeric vs. non-numeric,
but objective vs. subjective. The measurement doesn't have
to yield a numeric result, it just has to be doable by some
objective procedure. If you can build a machine to do it,
then it's objective. If you have to rely on the judgement of
a human, then it's subjective.
But we can make quasi-objective judgements, by averaging out all the
individual quirks of subjective judgement:
(1) Take 10 independent judges who are all recognised as good Python
coders by their peers, and ask them to give a score of 1-5 for the
quality of the comments...
Yes, but this is an enormous amount of effort to go to, and
at the end of the day, the result is only reliable in a
statistical sense.
This still seems to me to be qualitatively different from
something like testing the tensile strength of a piece of
steel. You can apply a definite procedure and obtain a
definite result, and no human judgement is required at all.
--
Greg
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