"The phrase "bad code" gets thrown around in reviews and online forums all the time. But what does it actually mean? It's a good example of the vague terms that occasionally make the rounds in developer circles without much to qualify them. We've collected opinions on the subject, metrics, and code risks that you can use to discuss what "bad" quality is for your team and how to improve it."
"Bad code is a general term that developers, project managers, and other stakeholders use as a catch-all for a range of coding problems - bugs, smells, security issues - that contribute to low readability, maintainability, and scalability. It doesn't just refer to codebases that have issues or don't work like they're supposed to. In different cases, bad code refers to anything not optimized for performance and maintenance, from confusing variable names to functions that loop using too much memory."
Bad code denotes a variety of coding problems — bugs, code smells, security issues, and performance shortcomings — that lower readability, maintainability, and scalability. Examples range from unclear variable names and inconsistent formatting to monolithic files and inefficient algorithms. Criteria for labeling code as bad include difficulty for reviewers to understand, effort required to maintain or scale, lack of correct styling, poor documentation, frequent bugs, and security vulnerabilities. The assessment of bad code depends on context and trade-offs such as licensing or urgency. Recognizing common red flags enables teams to prioritize refactoring, improve naming, add tests, and tighten security.
Read at The JetBrains Blog
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