What does quality mean to you?
Here's what it means to me
"What does quality mean to you?"
Years ago I was asked this question by a CTO in an interview, and my answer was not satisfactory. I brought up my knowledge of quality assurance, talking about concepts like "0% defect leakage," type safety, and how the user interface should be free of bugs.
The light immediately went out of his eyes. He wrapped up the conversation and I never heard back from that company.
Maybe I could have offered a metaphor about how a good mechanic keeps his workbench tidy and tools organized. But really, that's just attempting to say something profound which I don't truly believe.
I’ve been carrying that question with me ever since. I finally have an answer:
"No underscores in the user interface."
That's it. Well, almost.
Good software doesn't leak implementation details to the user. If you model your system around the real-world domain and prioritize people over technology, the user isn't forced to think about how the software is built.
I once worked on a product where users had to include underscores in a document name. That decision served the system really well. It probably improved performance, reduced complexity, and made the code very easy to understand. But it pushed that complexity onto the users, who had to think a bit like an engineer to use the product.
The technology was very impressive, but if it isn't in service of real people living in the real world, who does it benefit?
Maybe that CTO will still think this is a naive answer. In ten years maybe I will too.
In some ways, I hope so.