Where does Quality Code come from?

I have commented and blogged about code quality many times. A recent discussion has influenced me to review my old posts.

A current blog entry entitled "Quality-Speed Tradeoff - You're kidding yourself" asserts that quality is a primary factor in obtaining and sustaining a high speed of software development.

The Maverick Software Development blog contains an archive of the most interesting posts from the old Maverick Software Development group. On that blog can be found "Quality Code" where an analogy is presented to show some of the various definitions of a quality automobile.

So, where does quality code come from? Another question could be where does poor/low quality code come from?

If those questions can be answered could we arrive at the "cause" of poor/low quality code and the "cause" of high quality code?

Another question that comes to mind is this, "Can a high quality software product be made of low quality code?" This question causes one to suppose that the quality of the software product and the quality of the code may be independent. Is this true?

Consider read-ability to be an aspect of quality code. Readable code is another term for code that conveys an accurate message of what the code is actually doing. It is beyond "intent revealing". Intent revealing code is supposed to convey the intent of the programmer. What if the programmer did not meet their intentions? Readable code makes it apparent to what is actually taking place.

Can a quality software product be developed with code that is not easily read?

Here is a consideration for you. Assembly languages are not easily read by the human programmer. There have been quality software products developed in assembly language. Therefore quality software products can be developed with code that has poor readability and therefore a quality software product can be developed with poor/low quality code.

Can poor/low quality code be modified correctly as fast as high quality code?

Consider the development of what is termed "high level languages". One of many reasons that languages such as AGOL, Pascal, COBOL, C, Ada, ...., C# and Java have been developed was to decrease the burden and cost of understanding existing code that needed modification. Simply stated it is that high level languages are more readable. Given this known aspect of programming it can be stated that readable code can be modified correctly faster than less-readable code. Therefore quality code allows for increased speed when maintaining code, or stated another way, quality code takes less time to modify than poor/low quality code. Can this be said for all facets of quality for code?

Consider another attribute of quality code. Quality code has little or no duplicated code. Let's go back to some of the previous questions. Can a quality software product be developed with low quality code? Can a quality software product be developed with duplicated code? I propose that the answer is again YES.

Can code with duplication be correctly modified as fast or faster than code with little or no duplication? The answer is NO. The time to locate the duplicate code plus the time to insert the modification in each location are just two of the factors of the increased time needed to deal with duplicate code. Once again code quality is related to the speed in which correct modifications can be made to the code.

Does it take longer to initially develop high quality code? In the case of readable code I propose that in the worst case it takes no longer to develop readable code than non-readable code and that in most cases it takes less time. In the example of assembly code versus a high level language I propose that most modern software applications can always be developed faster in a high level language. In the case of duplicate code I propose that it takes less time to create the appropriate non-duplicate containing solution than it does to duplicate the code. Let us step back a few short years before refactoring functionality in modern IDE's. Many times I had developed code that I had "inlined" what was conceptually a function. After I had developed it and stepped through it with the debugger until I was satisfied I would then copy the code and make a function and paste it in. It was easy and didn't take any longer than it would to have duplicated it else where. I have now given two examples where quality code takes less time to develop than poor/low quality code.

Finally, where does quality code come from? Well the obvious answer is from people that understand code quality. So, where do people come from that have that understanding? I dare say they are the result of much work and effort on their part to gain experience, knowledge, techniques, and tools which allow them to excel in their profession.

I propose that the level of quality of code is directly related to the level of experience, expertise, and professionalism of the one writing the code. If you want to experience the benefits of quality code then you must first find experienced professionals or allow your developers the opportunity to become those desired professionals.