[TeMPOraL]

It's fine when we're talking about leisure-paced art, done by people who deeply care about what they do. But the reality of software development is different. Software is written primarily by people who treat it as a job, and care about it (on average) about as much as they're paid to - and they're being paid by people who don't care about the product, but its ability to make money. Software written in such environment is (unlike music) powering systems that affects livelihoods, health and safety of other people. With the market pushing quality down, we need a countering force pushing it up.

Or, imagine dropping all regulations around planes, cars, food, health care or infrastructure. Would things be handled better by artists, free to pursue quality? Maybe. Will majority of the providers be artists, or even care about quality? No.

[gota]

Just a sidenote, reading your comment it occurs to me that I have no idea - and as far as I can tell never read anything about - what is the proportion of code that is done 'for fun' versus 'for pay'.

If anyone has any survey or any discussion on that please reply so I can take a look at it. I'd like to confront my expectations with data