I don't exactly disagree, but I also don't like how this article confounds concepts and considers the idea that "people value different things" in a bit of a vacuum.
Usually I would expect an engineer to be able to gauge roughly "what values" are most important in a given practical context. Let's call those the "hard constraints" of the problem being solved. Let's set the hard constraints aside and consider "taste" only in the context of the remaining degrees of liberty.
In other words, we often impose on ourselves additional constraints that are not strictly necessary. An artist in a given context may technically be required to use oil paint and a 4x6 canvas. But the work product will be judged on what additional constraints (or lack thereof) the artist plays by.
As a rule of thumb, I'll stick my neck out and say that good software engineering taste, while notionally similar to artistic taste, is unique in that it is 1) aesthetically minimalist, and; 2) maximalist in self-restraint.
I think the notion of taste still eludes this description, but whenever I've encountered something I found truly in bad taste, it usually went counter to these principles for no obvious reason: in other words it was sacrificing something without any benefit. Oftentimes bad taste is taking a loss and calling it a tradeoff: in my experience this often occurs when people confuse simplicity for familiarity.
Usually I would expect an engineer to be able to gauge roughly "what values" are most important in a given practical context. Let's call those the "hard constraints" of the problem being solved. Let's set the hard constraints aside and consider "taste" only in the context of the remaining degrees of liberty.
In other words, we often impose on ourselves additional constraints that are not strictly necessary. An artist in a given context may technically be required to use oil paint and a 4x6 canvas. But the work product will be judged on what additional constraints (or lack thereof) the artist plays by.
As a rule of thumb, I'll stick my neck out and say that good software engineering taste, while notionally similar to artistic taste, is unique in that it is 1) aesthetically minimalist, and; 2) maximalist in self-restraint.
I think the notion of taste still eludes this description, but whenever I've encountered something I found truly in bad taste, it usually went counter to these principles for no obvious reason: in other words it was sacrificing something without any benefit. Oftentimes bad taste is taking a loss and calling it a tradeoff: in my experience this often occurs when people confuse simplicity for familiarity.