There's also the issue of the timescale. Start with one programmer and server. You have the finances to purchase 10 additional servers or hire one additional pr

There's also the issue of the timescale. Start with one programmer and server. You have the finances to purchase 10 additional servers or hire one additional programmer. You can get 10 servers bought, delivered, installed and configured in one week. These servers can be deployed to do anything from load balancing, web caching, database caching, being database read slaves or application servers. Regardless of the quality of your architecture, 10 servers will probably add some scalability to your system. Furthermore, they can be re-purposed as the situation demands. Hiring a better programmer (or just another warm body) takes longer. Furthermore, the improved code they produce isn't as flexible as surplus hardware. Of course, the situation changes when you've got thousands of servers.