Track: Effective design and Clean code

Abstract: If you asked ten people for an example of what they think is great code you'd probably get ten very different answers. Some people care about performance. Others dexterity. Others simplicity. Different problems call for a different set of concerns, and different sensibilities frame the same problem in different ways. But are there universal laws governing what makes a given piece of code great? What objective criteria do we have to evaluate the quality of software? What are some of the questions we can ask beyond "do the tests pass"? From a deep interest in better understanding what makes some software great and what makes other software not as great, this talk will borrow from architecture, philosophy, linguistics and art to find techniques for identifying how to build something timeless and enduring.