Question

Are there any methods/systems that you have in place to incentivize your development team members to write ‘good’ code and add comments to their code? I recognize that ‘good’ is a subjective term and it relates to an earlier question about measuring the maintainability of code as one measurement of good code.

Answer 1

While most people respond that code reviews are a good way to ensure high quality code, and rightfully so, they don’t seem to me to be a direct incentive to getting there. However, coming up with a positive incentive for good code is difficult because the concept of good code has large areas that fall in the realm of opinion and almost any system can be gamed.

At all the jobs I have had, the good developers were intrinsically motivated to write good code. Chicken and egg, feedback, catch 22, call it what you will, the best way to get good code is to hire motivated developers. Creating an environment where good developers want to work is probably the best incentive I can think of. I’m not sure which is harder, creating the environment or finding the developers. Neither is easy, but both are worth it in the long term.

I have found that one part of creating an environment where good developers want to work includes ensuring situations where developers talk about code. I don’t know a skilled programmer that doesn’t appreciate a good critique of his code. This helps the people that like to be the best get better. As a smaller sub-part of this endeavor, and thus an indirect incentive to create good code, I think code reviews work wonderfully. And yes, your code quality should gain some direct benefit as well.

Another technique co-workers and I have used to communicate good coding habits is a group review in code. It was less formal and allowed people to show off new techniques, tools, features. Critiques were made, kudos were given publicly, and most developers didn’t seem to mind speaking in front of a small developer group where they knew everyone. If management cannot see the benefit in this, spring for sammiches and call it a brown bag. Devs will like free food too.

We also made an effort to get people to go to code events. Granted, depending on how familiar you all are with the topic, you might not learn too much, but it keeps people thinking about code for a while and gets people talking in an even more relaxed environment. Most devs will also show up if you offer to pick up a round or two of drinks afterwards.

Wait a second, I noticed another theme. Free food! Seriously though, the point is to create an environment where people that already write good code and those that are eager to learn want to work.