OT: Crazy Programming

[Laura Creighton]

> Laura Creighton wrote:
> > 
> > The ability to rank something and whether it is objective or not are
> > independent concepts.
> 
> But for the ranking to be objective, it has to be
> independent of the person doing the ranking.
> 
> > I could find the 3 best, and the 2 worst with no trouble, and there
> > was broad consensus in the room about this.  There was disagreement
> > as to the precise ranking, however.
> 
> Which says to me that the ranking process is *not*
> completely objective. Not because the process involves
> people using their senses, but because the result
> depends on who is doing it.

We're in agreement here.  What I am objecting to is the notion that
because something is subjective it cannot be measured.  When you
are having the subjective experience of champaigne tasting, you are
measuring the quality of the champaigne.  And you can rank them.  
And as you get more skilled in Champaigne tasting, you will find that
your rankings tend to converge with other people who are skilled
champaigne tasters.  This is called 'developing one's taste' and
it is a universal human activity.  Programming works the same way -
while one can talk about the qualities that make a program elegant,
thats is not the same thing as the subjective experience you got when
you looked at Holger's concise open-or-closed string detector.

We went 'wow, that's elegant' because, after all is said and done ... it's
elegant.

Laura