Just this morning, I was thinking about metrics. It should be possible to develop a set of metrics for code quality that would apply to apps using particular languages and libraries. These metrics would be general and very imperfect, but they would still have some utility. For example, it would be fairly easy to develop an automated metrics program to run on a given Ruby on Rails app. Things like depth of nesting in code, reported errors per statement, average lines of code per function.
What if there was a website where you could download a metrics app, which would take the measurements, then upload the data to a web app, where someone could login and see how well their shop stacks up in comparison to the general population of shops using the same language and library?
This would give hiring shops some way to quantify the maturity of the shops a prospective hire has worked.
So the Rails community is free of deeply nested spaghetti logic and long run-on cut and paste methods? There are no Rails apps with overly deep class hierarchies?
Metrics are not so much for code quality as to flag widespread code suckage. I still think this could benefit hiring.
What if there was a website where you could download a metrics app, which would take the measurements, then upload the data to a web app, where someone could login and see how well their shop stacks up in comparison to the general population of shops using the same language and library?
This would give hiring shops some way to quantify the maturity of the shops a prospective hire has worked.