What does quality of codebase mean?
- Robustness
- Decent unit test coverage
- Good error handling
- Maintainability
- simplicity
- Expressiveness (not obfuscated with large statements of ifs)
- Use of common idioms (
- Clean architecture
- Ease of use
- Documentation (don’t rely on assumptions)
- Generic
- Cost
- Development time overhead
- Technical debt
- Return on investment
Is quality worth the cost?
Quality cost is somehow easy to measure but the benefits are harder to evaluate.
- automation and tooling can help reducing the cost
- CPU time is cheaper than human time
- it’s easier to replace hardware than hiring
Quality investment: Companies tend to view code as investment, regardless of its quality.