Working in a Code for America brigade for over two years has highlighted for me all the ways that standard metrics people use for code quality become irrelevant in this context. I've been thinking hard for the last few years about a framework to describe accurately what makes code useful to the world, and why most discussion of "good code" fall very shy of the mark.

In this talk we're cover my CIVC framework for code qualities, and what concrete changes it means you should make when you sit down to write.