alt Hacker News> you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code
which has always been true
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It’s also possible to sell chairs that are uncomfortable and food that tastes terrible. Yet somehow we still have carpenters and chefs; Herman Miller and The French Laundry.
Some business models will require “good” code, and some won’t. That’s how it is right now as well. But pretending that all business models will no longer require “good” code is like pretending that Michelin should’ve retired its list after the microwave was invented.
Still, talk about "good" code exist for a reason. When the code is really bad, you end up paying the price by having to spend too more and more time and develop new features, with greater risk to introduce bugs. I've seen that in companies in the past, where bad code meant less stability and more time to ship features that we needed to retain customers or get new ones.
Now whether this is still true with AI, or if vibe coding means bad code no longer have this long term stability and velocity cost because AI are better than humans at working with this bad code... We don't know yet.
Not only true but I would guess it's the normal case. Most software is a huge pile of tech debt held together by zip-ties. Even greenfield projects quickly trend this way, as "just make it work" pressure overrides any posturing about a clean codebase.
Not according to some on HN. They consider it impossible to create a successful business with imperfect code. Lol
It depends on the urgency. Not every product is urgent. CC arguable was very urgent; even a day of delay meant the competitors could come out with something slightly more appealing.
Wordpress hides behind a cabinet
Yes, and to add, in case it's not obvious: in my experience the maintenance, mental (and emotional costs, call me sensitive) cost of bad code compounds exponentially the more hacks you throw at it