The costs and benefits of well-crafted code

Over my career, I've worked with several different companies, none of which were able to truly make a commitment to well-crafted code.  A few were very close, but the majority of companies paid it lip-service at best (and completely ignored it at worst).  That's because a commitment to quality code does not come for free:

• You must limit your development team to those people with the experience and capability to consistently write well-crafted code.
• Because this talent pool is smaller, losing an employee is a greater cost.  Thus, you must be willing to compensate your "craftsmen" at a level which minimizes turnover.
• If you choose to hire junior employees who show the skill and interest in becoming "craftsmen", you must commit the time to mentor them, and accept the fact some of their development efforts (especially at first) will not "make the cut" for inclusion into the codebase.
• You will not be able to take advantage of "bargain" developers.  If a body-shop (on-shore or offshore) promises craftsman-level work at college-grad-new-hire prices, you should probably treat them the same as you would someone selling you a 1-year-old Porsche for the blue-book price of a 10-year-old Volkswagen.
  
• You must take the time to think before you code (or design).  Research - are there commonly-accepted approaches to meet your requirements?  Consider your design at an abstract level -  does it mesh well with the framework in which it will run?  This means initial development takes a little longer (compared to the "just do it the first way that comes to mind", or the "this is the only way I know how to do this" approach).
  
• You must be willing to refactor code which fulfills the system requirements, but is poorly-written.
  
• You must have the discipline to maintain these ideals, even when deadlines loom near.  You must be open to the possibility of sacrificing some functionality in order to meet a deadline.

For much of my career, I was too busy learning my craft to really think about things at this level.  However, once I had progressed to the point where I could recognize and produce well-crafted code, it really made me angry: why were there no companies who were willing to make that commitment to high-quality code, in order to reap the benefits?

• Well-crafted code has its own "beauty", and gives the developer a sense of accomplishment and pride.
• Well-crafted code is more easily understood by other developers (if they have a comparable level of expertise).  New employees can be productive sooner, and existing employees can maintain each others' code with less knowledge-transfer time.
  
• Well-crafted code generally has fewer bugs (I'm not sure whether that is a factor of the quality of the code, or the experience of the developer).  Bugs which do occur are usually quicker to diagnose and repair.
• Well-crafted code is easier to extend.  Future enhancements to the product can be made more quickly, and the product will be able to "withstand" more enhancements before its overall stability / reliability / performance takes a hit.

It's a no-brainer - well-crafted code is the way to go!  Of course I want a sense of pride in what I create.  Of course I want to understand new code more easily, fix bugs more quickly, and create future enhancements more easily.  Of course I want to work on a development team comprised of "craftsman-level" developers, committed to helping junior developers improve their skills.  Of course I want to take the time to learn and understand the best ways of building code, and not just rush ahead with the first approach that comes to mind...

... Wait a minute...  Those last couple of things are from the list of "costs", not "benefits".  What happened here?

That's when I realized - I've been looking at this purely from my own perspective - that of a developer who loves crafting code that works in concert with its environment, understanding design patterns, and thinking about and discussing the best ways to approach certain abstract problems.  From that perspective, the costs of well-crafted code are very small - so small that I viewed many of them as benefits!  And of course, the benefits are very large - "a sense of accomplishment and pride in what you do" - Abraham Maslow would agree.

If I'm going to try to understand why well-crafted code isn't a corporate priority, I'm going to have to look at this from a corporate perspective.  I've never been much of a business-person, so that perspective doesn't come easily to me.  But I'll give it a try in my next blog post.

PS: if you currently work for a place which is truly committed to well-crafted code, that's terrific - I'm jealous of you.  You're in an extremely rare situation.  Keep that in mind if you consider leaving for "greener pastures" - you're already about as green as it gets!