I'm not a commercial developer, and when I see something branded as an "investment," it usually translates into "money pit." The country that's spending more on

I'm not a commercial developer, and when I see something branded as an "investment," it usually translates into "money pit." The country that's spending more on software development than any other in the world is growing at a rate of roughly 2%/year. Engineers tend to look askance at categorizing different kinds of money. Granted, if you work in a business that has "profit center" and "cost center" mentality, you want to be in the part of the business that the suits associate with the good kind of cost, rather than the bad, no disputing that. One reason why companies have unique code is that in fact the code reflects a business process, and they are in fact trying to compete via having better processes.