Honesty as a code metric
Of all of the programmers I've worked with over the years, I can name three who really stick out as the best. These people have earned my respect, and I will always listen to their opinions, even when I think they're completely off their rockers. I currently have the honor of working with two of those here at Microsoft. The third one I still keep contact with through his blog. Dave Brady is currently VP of tech at a small Salt Lake City firm, and has a unique insight gained by watching junior coders mature into senior programmers.
Recently, Dave posted an essay entitled Dishonest Programming. The gist of it is something that you'll find in any good coding guide - make sure your identifiers are correct, minimize side-effects, and the like. But I had never really considered "code honesty" as a metric for judging the quality of a piece of code. It's a good read if you're concerned about making sure your code is maintainable. And you should be.