If we lose sight of the non-measurable things, we lose sight of what makes software development successful. If we focus on “computer science” and “software engineering,” we can lose sight of the human factors in writing code that make or break a successful project.
Software development is a team sport. Although individuals can and do shine as part of a team, the team results are what really matter. Sports fans thrive on statistics, but they know that ultimately, it’s not the statistics that win championships. It’s the intangibles that make the difference between first and second place.
Intangibles are hard
Despite our best efforts, we don’t have a means of measuring “writes good code.” It takes years of experience to recognize “good code” from “bad code,” and we can’t (yet?) measure it objectively. Maybe AI will figure it out someday. One could argue that AI can write good code today, but the ability to recognize good code is still uniquely human.
