I don't know if it can be boiled down to one thing. One likes to see mastery at every level, from the high-level design down to strict adherence to coding conventions.
The software has to have a strong opinion about what it's doing. It's modelled the problem in a way which leads to a straightforward solution, using a minimum number of concepts.
According to the conventions of the language in which it was written, the visible structure must reveal the underlying concepts. To a reasonably experienced practitioner, the code documents itself and comments are infrequent.
The software has to have a strong opinion about what it's doing. It's modelled the problem in a way which leads to a straightforward solution, using a minimum number of concepts.
According to the conventions of the language in which it was written, the visible structure must reveal the underlying concepts. To a reasonably experienced practitioner, the code documents itself and comments are infrequent.