"...We obviously cannot make this determination about ourselves or our code. So who does?..." The next guy who has to maintain it, of course! That is works (or at least that you think it does) goes without saying. Kind of amazed that this discussion has been all about functionality and appearance, and not about maintainability. Anecdote#1: Worked with an arrogant jerk. After having to enhance his code, I forgave him. It was clear as a bell. Anecdote#2: Had to add a third parallel feature to some code. Boss said, no problem, should be quick because the last guy in there was supposed to make that easy - object oriented blah blah. Well, he cut & pasted the original code, changed the bits that needed to be different and forced me to rewrite his code in addition to adding mine, quadrupling the project time estimate. HIS code "worked." It just made what followed more trouble time and expense. (Oh, and made ME look bad, because although his project was "on time" mine was not!)