Don't you also need to qualify the experience level of "someone else". ... Can a professional of average compentence ...
A professional is a professional. A thousand years ago, under the guild system, if someone claimed to be of a specific rank in a guild, you could be reasonably certain that this person could do X, Y, and Z. You (usually) didn't get awarded a given rank without having performed a certain amount of work to demonstrate your skill.
I'm not advocating that Perl go the route of certifications or other such items. But, when I write code to be maintained by other Perl professionals, I expect a strong understanding of certain concepts. Things like recursion, references, safe I/O interaction, and the like. I expect a passing familiarity with others, such as the symbol table.
No, I don't expect that only wizards will maintain my code, but I also don't expect that monkeys will, either. Now, if my employer chooses to employ a monkey to maintain my code after asking me to write Hal (of "I can't let you do that, Dave" fame), that's my employer's problem, not mine.
My criteria for good software:
- Does it work?
- Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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