I don't know about code "quality", which is a rather nebulous notion that no one seems able to accurately define, but in terms of functionality there may be a t

I don't know about code "quality", which is a rather nebulous notion that no one seems able to accurately define, but in terms of functionality there may be a tendency to underestimate what well-financed teams in industry can accomplish. Consider 4 examples. 1) The first is the only one of which I have personal knowledge. I used to work for a large corporation which developed address reading software for the US Postal Service. The project had generated about $1B for the company at the time I was there and comparable costs savings for the customer. I don't believe OCR software that is widely commercially available approaches the performance of that system. 2) IBM Watson. Here we have an example of a well educated, well financed corporate team producing a software system capable of beating the best human players at Jeopardy. I think prior to this demonstration few would have believed such a thing possible. 3) Google Self Driving Car. Again look at how much progress on an extremely difficult problem has been made by a company team in a short amount of time. 4) Recent NSA revelations: The technical capabilities revealed by Edward Snowden exceed even the somewhat mythical beliefs about the NSA's capabilities that were prevalent in the tech community prior to these revelations.