I think your mistaking technical debt for code quality. I've seen the same thing play out and more often than not, its a helix like cycle of projects starting

I think your mistaking technical debt for code quality. I've seen the same thing play out and more often than not, its a helix like cycle of projects starting simple and as time goes on trade offs are made and you get a lot technical debt then you rewrite and the cycle begins again. I partly agree with you about "ugly=not written by me", I just think that only happens at the edges aka semantics.. Nowadays its pretty easy for teams to come to a consensus on whats clean/ugly vs acceptable/subjective.