As you note, the answer is mostly no. In my experience, it is the experienced people who are more likely to complain about code quality, as they can better recognize it and value it more. I just wrote an article about the need to make code more 'pretty': Why You Should Polish Your Code.
One code base that has consistently impressed me is the Spring Application Framework, which is open source and written in Java (I'm primarily a Java developer). I've looked at other popular open source Java libraries and generally have not been impressed by their code quality, so I don't think that open source is any guarantee of prettier code.
Software development is hard for many reasons. I agree with earlier comments that a fundamental issue is that our ability to dream up software requirements easily exceeds our ability to build it. I recently wrote an article discussing how trying to meet the various functional and non-functional requirements makes producing good software so hard. Check it out: Producing Good Software is Hard.
I have implemented the organizational system described in "Getting Things Done", and can say that it is a big help. I strongly encourage everyone to give it a try. For more details, check out my article on my experience with the system.
Typical business applications are built to be used for years, which means they must be able to handle years of ongoing maintenance. Yet in my experience it is rare to see an application developed with this as an explicit requirement. Too often, its a rush to throw together the application to meet some artificial deadline. When the application is finally transitioned to the maintenance team, they suffer through a series of critical problems with the application until they're able to fix or rewrite enough of the functionality to make it stable. And it probably still isn't easily maintainable.
Slashdot Mirror
As you note, the answer is mostly no. In my experience, it is the experienced people who are more likely to complain about code quality, as they can better recognize it and value it more. I just wrote an article about the need to make code more 'pretty': Why You Should Polish Your Code. One code base that has consistently impressed me is the Spring Application Framework, which is open source and written in Java (I'm primarily a Java developer). I've looked at other popular open source Java libraries and generally have not been impressed by their code quality, so I don't think that open source is any guarantee of prettier code.
Software development is hard for many reasons. I agree with earlier comments that a fundamental issue is that our ability to dream up software requirements easily exceeds our ability to build it. I recently wrote an article discussing how trying to meet the various functional and non-functional requirements makes producing good software so hard. Check it out: Producing Good Software is Hard.
I have implemented the organizational system described in "Getting Things Done", and can say that it is a big help. I strongly encourage everyone to give it a try. For more details, check out my article on my experience with the system.
I've become a lot more passionate about maintainability since spending time working on a maintenance team. I go into this topic in more detail in a few of my articles: The Importance of Maintainable Software and How to Create Maintainable Software.