‘Code quality’ and ‘code style’ are terms that are frequently used interchangeably to describe the ‘goodness’ of programming code. Our position is that they are not the same, and that treating them as the same causes confusion. Different sets of style guides contain conflicting advice, have rules that do not obviously relate to quality, and specify requirements that cannot be objectively confirmed. This risks students believing that meeting guides will ‘improve’ their code, when in fact it may not, and so they may not appreciate what good quality really means. In this position paper we argue that ‘quality’ describes an intrinsic property of the code whereas ‘style’ always has a dependence on context, for example, programming language or personal preference. While ‘good quality’ requires ‘good style’, the relationship between the two must be made explicit. In this paper we propose a model that describes this relationship, explains why some guides are inconsistent, addresses any subjectivity, and provides a formal basis on which to teach code quality.

Link to Presentation: https://youtu.be/qmCgUOHLJ2I