I agree that developer time is the crux, but I take away a different conclusion. Say you have to maintain this code (so, a given). Two weeks later of not having

I agree that developer time is the crux, but I take away a different conclusion. Say you have to maintain this code (so, a given). Two weeks later of not having touched it, and if it's bad enough, you'll end up re-writing it from scratch. And this is before we even get to whether or not anyone else has to maintain it. The developer years wasted by dirty code and technical debt should not be ignored.