Once upon a time I worked as a production manager for a jewelry manufacture. Sure the production quality was a key there. The issue was much more interesting because jewelry is not mechanics or electronics. It is a piece of beauty. And its quality cannot be (fully) expressed in numbers.
The company I was working for had a pretty high quality attitude. So I had enough occasions to explain to a worker that her work wouldn't pass. And why it wouldn't. And often the explanation failed just because (see above) the quality could not be fully expressed in measurable numbers. So finally I usually asked: "Would you wear such piece of adornment?" (most of jewelry workers are women). In most cases no further discussion was required. Because every woman has a "built in" sense of beauty.
Now I'm back in my beloved software industry. This time not as a developer but as a Continuous Integration man. I establish a lot of measures that should be passed before a code is considered being "done". But I still did not find such a final question that should distinguish a good code from another stuff. In a high and unequivocal way that should be clear for developers, testers and users.
"Will you use this software for yourself?" - "Hm, it suits for me."
"Will you let this software to control your heart simulator?" - "It won't control my heart simulator."
There is a few of software companies owning and using their products and enjoying rapid development cycle - such as online services and AntiVirus developers. Their engineers can gain a fame of success and a shame of failure. An excellent example is Facebook. Each Facebook engineer owns his new feature till it is published to production world wide. Moreover to much extent it is an engineer decision to push a feature to production. And starting from it the feature is his born baby.
Software development for sale separates an engineer from the code. In a case of outsourcing a subcontractor separation becomes a gulf.
So the question is: What are those Ten Commandments, that Dao, that sense of beauty to force a software developer to understand the difference between a good code and... a different thing?
