On taste in software

You know it when you see it. A function that does exactly one thing. A variable name that needs no comment. An interface that never surprises you.

Taste is not style. Style is surface — tabs or spaces, where you put your braces. Taste is structural. It is the sense that something is slightly wrong even before you can articulate why.

Where it comes from

Taste is built by reading a lot of code and noticing what makes you uncomfortable. Not the bugs — those are obvious. The subtler things: the parameter that almost fits, the abstraction that almost holds.

Over time the discomfort sharpens into a signal you can trust.