Code quality doesn't matter today

In the 1990s, people cared about code quality. We held code reviews and developed metrics to measure code. We debated the different methods of measuring code: lines of code, cyclomatic complexity, function points, and more. Today, there is little interest in code metrics, or in code quality.

I have several possible explanations.

Agile methods Specifically, people believe that agile methods provide high-quality code (and therefore there is no need to measure it). This is possible; most advocates of agile tout the reduction in defects, and many people equate the lack of defects with high quality. While the re-factoring that occurs (or should occur) in agile methods, it doesn't guarantee high quality. Without measurements, how do we know?

Managers don't care More specifically, managers are focussed on other aspects of the development process. They care more about the short-term cost, or features, or cloud management.

Managers see little value in code It is possible that managers think that code is a temporary thing, something that must be constantly re-written. If it has a short expected life, there is little incentive to build quality code.

I have one more idea:

We don't know what makes good code good In the 1990s and 2000s, we built code in C++, Java, and later, C#. Those languages are designed on object-oriented principles, and we know what makes good code good. We know it so well that we can build tools to measure that code. The concept of "goodness" is well understood.

We've moved to other languages. Today we build systems in Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. These languages are more dynamic than C++, C#, and Java. Goodness in these languages is elusive. What is "good" JavaScript? What designs are good for Ruby? or Python? Many times, programming concepts are good in a specific context and not-so-good in a different context. Evaluating the goodness of a program requires more than just the code, it requires knowledge of the business problem.

So it is possible that we've advanced our programming languages to the point that we cannot evaluate the quality of our programs, at least temporarily. I have no doubt that code metrics and code quality will return.