Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by onion2k 25 days ago
Well, I have bad news for camp 1..

It's bad if they work in a part of the industry where code quality or efficiency matters. That's maybe 10% of the total though.

4 comments

I think it matters everywhere -- just because some fields get away with making trash doesn't mean that they're not vulnerable to people taking their lunch by making something distinctly-not-trash. People put up with a lot when there's lock-in, but there's a breaking point. (I say now using a linux desktop about 90% of the time now because windows has become such a fucking disaster)
Being vulnerable makes money unfortunately. And making money now has always been seen as more important than being sustainable in the long-term. Even if an exploit later takes away every cent of earnings.
Companies that don't care about code quality always care about the side effects of poor code quality. They just can't connect the dots.
I see this sentiment occasionally brought up, and at the same time see what’s happening to Github where the majority of their distributions is not security or efficiency related (not saying it’s because of LLMs, we don’t know). The point is, these things matter beyond beautiful code. You loose trust and you lose customers and money.
Are you seriously implying that technical debt is something that doesn't exist or something that managers don't care about??