Well said. I’ve always also thought that writing code and craftsmanship is a forced metaphor. At most, the product is the craft, not the code. And a product is exactly as good as people’s experiences of using it and how well it solves their problems. The underlying code quality is correlated with these things, but let’s be honest a badly designed product that doesn’t meet the customers needs can have PERFECT code and zero tech debt and still be a bad product because of it.

Also you know what, some code is disposable. Sure, we all want to craft amazing sculptures of metaphorical beautiful wooden chairs that will last a lifetime, but sometimes what the customer needs is a stack of plastic chairs, cheap, and done next week. Who cares if they break after like 1 year.

So, sometimes when I accept that my boss wants something rushed through, I don’t complain about the tech debt it’ll cause, I don’t fight back about how it should’ve designed to have wonderful code… not because I have no pride in my work, but because I understand the businesses needs.

And sometimes the business just wants you to make plastic chairs.