I Know My Code Is Bad Because I Start Defending It

A developer reveals a telling sign of poor code quality: the urge to defend and explain it when questioned, rather than letting the code speak for itself. Good code requires no justification or lengthy context, while bad code comes with apologies, warnings, and phrases like "it works" or "we'll clean it later." The author now uses a simple test for code quality: whether they would confidently modify their own code months later without fear of breaking something.