4 ms·

Code quality has nothing to do with the success of the vast majority of businesses

jacobsenscott 6y ago
Business seldom fail for a single reason, but poor code quality can be a major contributor to failure. Do you need to pay 20 programmers rather than 10? Do you have a higher customer turnover rate because they encounter too many bugs and lose trust in the system? Do you lose out on sales because you can't close the feature gaps with your competitors? Are you unable to respond to customer support requests in a timely fashion because there are too many, or fixing the problems is really hard?
- thinkingkong 6y ago
  Parent said vast majority and they're correct. As a corollary I've seen companies with impeccable code bases fail dramatically.
  - collyw 6y ago
    A company with an impeccable code base? Fake news.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    You’re missing the point. “Fling spaghetti code at the wall” will produce many failures and a few winners - the winners will not serve as evidence that poor spaghetti code is a perfectly viable business strategy.
    - thinkingkong 6y ago
      On the contrary; thats usually what happens. I'm not saying its _correct_ but the amount of cargo-culting I hear intermediate spaghetti-unicorn engineers repeat means they're actually inferring that it's a repeatable process.
UncleMeat 6y ago
That's why all andreessen horowitz funded companies hire a skeleton crew in bangalore, right? Code quality can't make a business succeed. But sufficiently bad code can cause a business to fail.
Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Screw up in ecommerce and your company ends up the front page on the business sections ASOS for example. I recall fixing a major problem where we could not collect any direct debits for 6-7 months and we put one of the most high profile UK tech journalist's bank account intro the red - that made the Guardian. Neither I or the company secretary ever got a thank you for recovering in todays terms several million pounds.

Business seldom fail for a single reason, but poor code quality can be a major contributor to failure. Do you need to pay 20 programmers rather than 10? Do you have a higher customer turnover rate because they encounter too many bugs and lose trust in the system? Do you lose out on sales because you can't close the feature gaps with your competitors? Are you unable to respond to customer support requests in a timely fashion because there are too many, or fixing the problems is really hard?

thinkingkong 6y ago
Parent said vast majority and they're correct. As a corollary I've seen companies with impeccable code bases fail dramatically.
- collyw 6y ago
  A company with an impeccable code base? Fake news.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  You’re missing the point. “Fling spaghetti code at the wall” will produce many failures and a few winners - the winners will not serve as evidence that poor spaghetti code is a perfectly viable business strategy.
  - thinkingkong 6y ago
    On the contrary; thats usually what happens. I'm not saying its _correct_ but the amount of cargo-culting I hear intermediate spaghetti-unicorn engineers repeat means they're actually inferring that it's a repeatable process.

UncleMeat 6y ago

That's why all andreessen horowitz funded companies hire a skeleton crew in bangalore, right? Code quality can't make a business succeed. But sufficiently bad code can cause a business to fail.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago

Screw up in ecommerce and your company ends up the front page on the business sections ASOS for example. I recall fixing a major problem where we could not collect any direct debits for 6-7 months and we put one of the most high profile UK tech journalist's bank account intro the red - that made the Guardian. Neither I or the company secretary ever got a thank you for recovering in todays terms several million pounds.