4. Dirty code inhibits the formation of an ownership culture.
I've found quite the opposite. The dirtier the code is, the more you try to keep the same guy on it. You hesitate to commit him to any other projects if there's even a prospect of needing him to work on "his" code. Programmers love that shit, especially the ones who write dirty code. It makes them feel smart, important, and indispensable (which unfortunately they are.) Plus, nobody is going to be looking over their shoulder gasping and saying "no wonder it's always broken!" because nobody else wants to get their brain dirty in that code. If you're a bad coder, taking ownership of your own crappy applications is your ticket to escaping peer review and protecting your job.
By contrast, the most vital and hard-core piece of C++ code we have at my company has had contributions from almost half the C++ developers we've employed, thanks to a great initial design and good stewardship. It's nobody's code except whoever is currently hacking on it. That doesn't inhibit people from feeling responsible; the quality of the code inspires everyone to maintain it even though nobody has any real claim to ownership.
I've found quite the opposite. The dirtier the code is, the more you try to keep the same guy on it. You hesitate to commit him to any other projects if there's even a prospect of needing him to work on "his" code. Programmers love that shit, especially the ones who write dirty code. It makes them feel smart, important, and indispensable (which unfortunately they are.) Plus, nobody is going to be looking over their shoulder gasping and saying "no wonder it's always broken!" because nobody else wants to get their brain dirty in that code. If you're a bad coder, taking ownership of your own crappy applications is your ticket to escaping peer review and protecting your job.
By contrast, the most vital and hard-core piece of C++ code we have at my company has had contributions from almost half the C++ developers we've employed, thanks to a great initial design and good stewardship. It's nobody's code except whoever is currently hacking on it. That doesn't inhibit people from feeling responsible; the quality of the code inspires everyone to maintain it even though nobody has any real claim to ownership.