Docstrings considered too complicated

[Gregory Ewing]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> (a) Can we objectively judge the goodness of code, or is it subjective?
> 
> (b) Is goodness of code quantitative, or is it qualitative?

Yes, I'm not really talking about numeric vs. non-numeric,
but objective vs. subjective. The measurement doesn't have
to yield a numeric result, it just has to be doable by some
objective procedure. If you can build a machine to do it,
then it's objective. If you have to rely on the judgement of
a human, then it's subjective.

> But we can make quasi-objective judgements, by averaging out all the 
> individual quirks of subjective judgement:
> 
> (1) Take 10 independent judges who are all recognised as good Python 
> coders by their peers, and ask them to give a score of 1-5 for the 
> quality of the comments...

Yes, but this is an enormous amount of effort to go to, and
at the end of the day, the result is only reliable in a
statistical sense.

This still seems to me to be qualitatively different from
something like testing the tensile strength of a piece of
steel. You can apply a definite procedure and obtain a
definite result, and no human judgement is required at all.

-- 
Greg