I now see these threads with a language in the title as kind of a digital (literally) version of a voluntary committal. Those herein are, of their own volition, taking their thoughts and feelings about technology X out of the Internet at large and into a safe place where they can do no harm. No one in threads such as these are going to change their mind. It's a beautiful thing.
I wish more ppl felt this way. What a compliment it is to oneself when I hear ppl saying "write clean code" as if they know its address and had dinner with clean code just last night.
I was thinking there should be some metric around d(code)/dt . That is, as the software is used, 'bad' code will tend to change a lot but add no functionality. 'Good' code will change little even when it's used mode.
d(code)/dt isn't a very good metric though. Think of the Linux kernel. Drivers get some of the least maintenance work and are broadly the lowest quality part of the kernel. arch/ is busier than drivers/, but anything you find in the parts being touched are also significantly higher quality.
Creating a configuration file? I am afraid to inform you that you have started writing a compiler. What's the only way to avoid this? Your software not being successful.
