My criteria for good software: ... Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

Employer, Give this person a raise!

The maintainence part of code's life is the most expensive. If someone makes maintainence easier to do they are saving you money and pain down the road.

I maintained code written by other people for what seems like way too long. I learned a ton about what poor quality code looks like. I learned to write code that would be understandable. Since then I had someone come up to me and say "this thing you wrote has been given to me to update. your code is so easy to read. thank you." That was one of the proudest moments in my career.

I wonder if maybe every newly hired developer should have to maintain code for six months before writting anything new.

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