"shit code" is in the vast minority of code written, most of it ranges from merely crappy to so beautiful you'd auction off your own mother just to bask in its

"shit code" is in the vast minority of code written, most of it ranges from merely crappy to so beautiful you'd auction off your own mother just to bask in its presence a little longer The reason architecture starts mattering is because you can do things like put that "shit code" behind an interface/microservice/whathaveyou and then the rest of the system just doesn't care. This is why code itself isn't particularly valuable in the way you seem to be implying. It isn't without value, but while software is valuable, it's rare for specific code to be where that value is at.