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  onion2k
  If thorough testing and 100 experts can’t find a problem, the thing is probably perfect.If you can get 100 experts to agree on something then you've cracked a much harder problem than software quality.
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  amarant
  I disagree with the initial premise>Quality is the absence of problemsA low quality code base can be problem free if surrounding circumstances are forgiving enough. Conversely, a high quality codebase can have a lot of problems in difficult circumstances.I haven't thought about it long enough to have a definition of quality that I'm really happy with, but I think a "resilience to hardships" would be a better definition of quality. Hardships can come in many forms, and often you're prepared for some of them but not all. Occasionally you'll be prepared for hardships that never occur. There is something to be said for being resilient against the correct kinds of hardships, which is why I'm not entirely pleased with my definition either.But absence of problems is not it. That might be entirely circumstantial and is therefore orthogonal to quality.
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  manoDev
  > Some people don’t care enough > > The more people you hire, the more likely you are to hire people who don’t care enough about good interface design. Good interface design needs to be valued by everyone who can affect the work. That includes developers, designers, product managers, and often the CEO.I know where you're going with this, but here's a twist:A CEO who cares about interface _design_ is path to micromanaging and pain. A CEO should care about interface _designers_, who are (hopefully) the people trained on how do it well.Even better: CEOs should care about developers with UI/UX skills, because too often CEOs adopt designers like a pet and keep them busy 24/7 asking for mockups.
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  chickensong
  I assume this is written by a UI designer or something, and it certainly feels like "notes" and not a cohesive article. Claiming "The six signals of quality in software" and then listing only user-facing concerns and including subjective items like "Beauty: Is the software as aesthetically pleasing as possible?" is questionable.I'm interested in quality, but I didn't find these notes enlightening, and couldn't even finish the article.
• christina97
  Right off the bat, I disagree with the assertion that software quality is merely a concept of how it functions now. In reality software is a living thing and quality is so much more than whether there is a glaring issue right now.
• p1necone
  The stuff about scale not allowing quality resonated with me.baseless speculation follows!!!I think large orgs can definitely achieve high quality. but only by spinning up small, totally autonomous teams working on every layer of whatever stack their product is on, one team per product (maybe two if there's some really obvious line in the sand between two different things that talk to each other, but be careful! and make sure both teams are in the same timezone!).As soon as you start trying to do those things that seem really sensible when you have a bunch of separate autonomous teams - like "hey you're both working on similar features, you should share the implementation", and "oops all our products look different, we should come up with a unified component library", and "we need automated tests - everyone should use this specific tool that we paid for" you run into the big org problem.My gut feel is that the best way to get some level of coherency without running into these problems is to share knowledge, best practices, examples etc. But never dictate anything that actually gets in the way of any of your teams owning their own shit. Don't make teams use some internal/external library for functionality x, don't enforce processes, don't have a separate design team dictating css styling to teams, don't enforce org wide CI policies, don't have a separate DevOps team handling releases - just hire competent people and let them do their thing. If you do want to try to build something so that all the teams solve the same problem in the same way, you need to get them to use it by making it so good they want to, not by telling them they have to.You might be able to enforce some baseline level of mediocrity by doing those things, but the only way to achieve excellence is to get out of the way and stop trying to "help".
• d-yoda
  Isn't high quality defined by how easy it is to maintain as the scale grows? I feel there is a disconnect between the "quality as perceived by developers" and the "quality as experienced by designers and users."
• aryehof
  Quality software meets its requirements. Both functional and non-functional. Of course our industry still cannot quantify non-functional requirements, or discover a way to predictably implement functional requirements.So all that remains for our so called “engineering” discipline, is an answer that says something that doesn't break a lot.
• livingsoft
  Corporate megasoftware suffers from the same structural problems as ancient megafauna; when there is a fixed amount of material to build the organism, it's almost always more efficient to split it into smaller, more coherent, repeatable bodies that project power through coordination, rather than a single large body that imposes its will on the world via sheer weight and size. The bottleneck was, as in the now-extinct branch of evolution, the viability of intelligence in smaller entities; that is now a solved problem. Now we are headed to an Anthropocene of cyberspace, where software is primarily a personal artefact, with optional collaboration, rather than a product designed and distributed from centralized organizations.
• ChrisMarshallNY
  > Quality is impossible at scaleThat's a "yes and no" thing. Handmade quality, yes, but some companies get pretty good at finding a "sweet spot," between better-than-average quality, and "Rolls Royce" quality.Source: I worked for a company that was pretty much renowned for Quality. We made stuff that is pretty near the top shelf, but still a rung or two under the top.It's not easy.Also, customers are willing to pay for garbage. As long as that continues, garbage producers will drive quality producers out of business.
• kwakker35
  I tend to agree with a few others here, Quality is not just the absence of problems, it is something deeper.For me it means care and attention were paid while developing, the rough edges have been smoothed off for want of a better phrase. This doesn't mean using the latest and greatest framework or library, usually quality will come from a deep understanding of the basics and concepts like design patterns .You can spot quality code in the same way to can tell a fake Rolex from a real one but the quality of the movement.
• ChrisMarshallNY
  I also think of Quality as “usable,” “discoverable,” “pleasant,” and “accessible.” He covers them, in some fashion.Some of these are difficult to quantify, but are often the difference between success or failure, in the market.I constantly encounter “dead” software. Software that is correct, performant, awesome (in some cases), but something that I don’t “want” to use. A “necessary evil.”That kind of statement doesn’t fly well, in a community of “Inspector 34”s, but it applies to those we like to call “customers.”
• RetroTechie
  Strangely "elegance" isn't even mentioned. "Beauty" comes close but is not the same.And "simplicity" comes to mind. Also not mentioned.
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  1970-01-01
  Why no security? It's mid-2026, high quality software must be secure by design or you won't be using it.
• arscan
  Quality is an opinion based on your perspective. The author articulates quality from their perspective, which has value, but isn’t universal.
• arbirk
  > Beauty: Is the software as aesthetically pleasing as possible?Imo this point should be changed to reviewability. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
• Arainach
  > The agreed-upon best-designed software in the industry has noticeable problems.The what? Since when has "the industry" been able to define best-designed, much less agree on it?
• cadamsdotcom
  Since it’s so subjective let’s poll our engineers’ NPS!“How likely are you to work in this codebase again?”0 = Least likely 10 = Most likely
• docheinestages
  We should look at the nature to learn what quality means. Survive first with whatever it takes. Then if you have comeptition, keep improving.
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  0xbadcafebee
  Keep in mind that there are people for whom thinking about quality has been their whole career, for decades. There've been long-running industry studies on software quality that have gathered metrics across thousands of businesses on what works and what doesn't. People have been focusing on quality in businesses in general for centuries. It's not a solved problem, but it has been tackled by experts for a long time. It's a good idea to look to their work first before taking a swing at it yourself.Personally I find quality to have a fundamental impact on everything every human does. It affects mental state, motivation, affects ability, necessity, and time to do things, creates or reduces costs, availability of resources, clarifies or complicates, makes life easier or harder, etc. It can save or destroy a business, make someone's life feel easy as pie or insanely frustrating. But it's not always easy to do right; you need a system to apply quality intelligently or you risk your efforts being wasted (https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/produ...).
• adamddev1
  What a beautiful website.
• therobopsych
  (Anthony has some great paper solo role playing games on his blog too)
• satisfice
  "Quality is the absence of problems" is an example of the reification fallacy, because a problem is not a fixed thing. A problem is only a problem because someone decides it is so.This is why a better definition is "quality is value to some person who matters." This definition instantly places you at the crux of the matter, which is not about a state of the world or of your product in the world, but rather about WHO matters and how they FEEL about your product.
• jongjong
  Absence of problems is definitely a major factor but I like to think of 'maintainability' as being the main marker of quality. Maintainable code has fewer problems because it makes problems easier to solve.
• sublinear
  > Beliefs about quality I want to disprove... (lists 38 bullets)Sure you didn't miss one? You can't have an exhaustive list because any of those can be just as true as false depending on the situation.Instead of picking the ones I disagree with most, I'll just say that low quality is miscommunication. The bugs are a snapshot of the organization.There are multiple facets to hang concern on that the other stakeholders don't know about or ignore. Your ability to discuss them, plan, and execute is the bottleneck. Everyone has to be on the same page.This cannot be the sole responsibility of the devs or small isolated teams. Scale is necessary for quality to emerge.
• devinodowd
  [flagged]
• cosqtanq
  [dead]