[xelhark]

If you think about it, software quality is not something that is ever visible or measurable from the outside.

Theoretically, you could write software by just having an incredibly long list of test cases and a random string generator.

The quality of that code would probably be terrible, but it would still work as long as your test cases are restrictive enough.

[mannykannot]

> If you think about it, software quality is not something that is ever visible or measurable from the outside.

If you have mistaken issues of style for issues of quality, than that might seem to be the case. True quality in software is measurable primarily in the defect rate, and secondarily in the amount of effort needed to enhance it.

> Theoretically, you could write software by just having an incredibly long list of test cases and a random string generator.

Putting aside the time and concurrency issues, the quality would be determined by the correctness and thoroughness of your test cases.

[AnimalMuppet]

You measure current code quality by your future development velocity. That is, low quality in your current code base makes it harder to produce the next feature, and the feature after that.

Unfortunately, you learn that some time after you write the poor-quality code...