[Gravityloss]

I wonder if there is some easy way to have a "spaghetti index" of a codebase. One could then have different criteria for different projects / parts of projects. If it's a business critical thing that also expects to see a lot of future development, one could then communicate to management that the spaghetti index is too high and that must be first lowered before further development can happen. And on the other hand, if it's a throwaway tool that's used for a limited time, no matter.

[Aperocky]

It's not just codebase, it applies to product, design and even human interactions.

It's hard to describe how important I think this principle is for a project, company or even life.

[Gravityloss]

Yes, sure, it won't solve everything and wouldn't be perfect.

In a corporate environment, if you can measure something with a number, then you can set a target and pass/fail criteria and so on. Developers' personal opinions of some code base's quality are harder to build corporate processes around.

There's things like integration tests and static analysis. Of course again, not foolproof and don't solve all problems. But they help. Especially in a corporate environment where you need all the mechanisms you can get to prevent skimping on quality.