reBlog from Maracas: Bad code is good for you?

I found this fascinating quote today:

 

I’d argue that bad code is often a sign and a side effect of a thriving, welcoming user community around a project.

The OSS projects with good code tend to have a relatively small group of committers doing nearly all the work. There is a big learning curve to working within the project’s (probably unwritten) architectural guidelines, and a big reputation curve that a new person has to climb to get their patches accepted.

Bad code is often a sign of welcoming new contributors, taking patches that do something useful even if the approach is ugly.

We  all know the problems bad code brings, but I would argue that some  projects are not just successful in spite of bad code, but successful  because they allow bad code.

Maracas, Bad code is good for you?, Sep 2009

 

You should read the whole article.