> The same feedback often gets a debate from a more experienced developer
Maybe that's because they have the experience they are able to debate it!
I think "maintainable" will always be debatable, because we are not using scientific methods to determine what is more maintainable. So we are all subjects to subtle biases like confirmation bias.
It would be great if we could use scientific method to determine how to write more maintainable code, but you would need a good definition of "maintainable" first, and that's hard.
Personally, I don't see much, if any, hard evidence that today's code (in 30 years to the future) will be more maintainable than the code written 30 years ago. I work on 30+ years old legacy codebase, which is often crazy complicated and effectively not-refactorable. But you can still fix bugs, you can add functionality. It's expensive to do, but not impossible. Would be the accumulated cost lower if people spent more time refactoring it, like today sometimes happens? Not clear at all.
Maybe that's because they have the experience they are able to debate it!
I think "maintainable" will always be debatable, because we are not using scientific methods to determine what is more maintainable. So we are all subjects to subtle biases like confirmation bias.
It would be great if we could use scientific method to determine how to write more maintainable code, but you would need a good definition of "maintainable" first, and that's hard.
Personally, I don't see much, if any, hard evidence that today's code (in 30 years to the future) will be more maintainable than the code written 30 years ago. I work on 30+ years old legacy codebase, which is often crazy complicated and effectively not-refactorable. But you can still fix bugs, you can add functionality. It's expensive to do, but not impossible. Would be the accumulated cost lower if people spent more time refactoring it, like today sometimes happens? Not clear at all.