[gjsman-1000]

And they somewhat have a point. What's the point of code quality, if it delays your startup 6 months, and the startup goes under? What's the point of code quality, if it will be replaced with the newest design or architecture change in 6 months? What's the point of planning for 5 years if a pandemic or supply chain shock could muck it up? What's the point of enforcing beautiful JQuery code... in 2012?

The problem isn't that companies make these tradeoffs. It's that we pretend we're not in the same boat as every other trade that deals with 'good enough' solutions under real-world constraints. We're not artists, we're tradesmen in 1920 arguing about the best home wiring practices. Imagine what it would be like if they were getting artistic about their beautiful tube-and-knob installations and the best way to color-code a fusebox; that's us.

[losteric]

What in the bad rhetoric is this? The trades did and still do have standards.

Hell there was a whole TikTok cycle where people learned there is a right and wrong way to lay tile/grout. One way looks fine until it breaks, the other lasts lifetimes.

It’s the exact same trend as in software: shitty bad big home builders hire crap trades people to build cheap slop houses for suckers that requires extensive ongoing maintenance. Meanwhile there are good builders and contractors that build durable quality for discerning customers.

The problem is exploitation of information asymmetries in the buyer market.

[gjsman-1000]

> The trades did and still do have standards.

Yes, they do; after regulation, and after the experimentation phase was forcibly ended. You can identify 'right and wrong' tile work, precisely because those standards were codified. This only reinforces my point: we're pre-standardization, they're post-standardization, and most pre-standardization ideas never work out anyway.

[samiv]

For a startup good quality code will never make a difference if everything else is wrong, i.e. product market fit etc. But conversely poor quality code can destroy a startup (the product cannot pivot fast enough, feature development grinds to a halt, developers leave, customers are unsatisfied etc.) even if everything else is right.