Is Programming Subjective

From LongFunctionsDiscussion: "...are preferred in the majority of cases, to not recognize this marks you as either a beginner, or a stubborn programmer who still thinks everything in programming is subjective."

What if most of it is subjective preferences? The only thing people seem to agree on is some form of heavy or light OnceAndOnlyOnce, but beyond that opinions are all over the map. HolyWars are wide and deep, we can't hide from them. I see people vying to enforce their own view of the world on others, and am bothered by it. We cannot sell BestPractice forever using only ArgumentFromAuthority. ArgumentFromAuthority may last a decade or two, but not much beyond that because stale ideas tend to be a safer target for criticism than new ones.

Thus, either we need to make it more objective by finding agreed-upon metrics, or get others to admit that it may all be subjective after all. As the above quote suggests, it may be a tough task.

Programming is more about communicating among people than it is about communicating to machines. As long as the rules are clear, the machine does not care about the format and structure of program code. However, people do. How they want their code and digital info organized is as personal as they want their physical desk organized.