I did read the thread, thank you. "An unmaintainable codebase makes it hard to deliver working software in the future." is a truism that I chose to respond wit

I did read the thread, thank you. "An unmaintainable codebase makes it hard to deliver working software in the future." is a truism that I chose to respond with a question, because I am not of the opinion that Domenic_S was even remotely suggesting that anyone write unmaintainable code. Domenic_S's argument of "working software is the most important deliverable" isn't really a bad point, regardless of what language you're using. If you have maintainable code that doesn't address the application's requirements, how much does maintainability matter then? In the real world, there is hierarchy of priorities, and for most, working is at the top of the priority list.