Under the present invention, a best practice violation (BPV) engine resource is first built. This typically occurs by: receiving sets of source code from a plurality of sources; detecting a programming language of each of the sets of source code; extracting code patterns from the sets of source code; defining meta data for each code pattern that indicates a quality; classifying each code pattern; and assigning a rank to each of the code pattern based on its corresponding meta data as well as a skill level and an experience level of the developer. Once the BPV engine resource is built, it will be used to detect best practice violations in other sets of source code.