Writing bad code never increases your net worth This is a really silly point to write, and obviously disprovable. Here's a really simple and realistic example:

Writing bad code never increases your net worth This is a really silly point to write, and obviously disprovable. Here's a really simple and realistic example: You've just deployed your app. It's perfect... except there's this huge performance issue with one of the most important pages. Your app's just gone up on Slashdot, TechCrunch, and everywhere else. Zillions of people are using it. You have two options: 1) An ugly evil hack that will sort out the performance for that page. Total time: 30 minutes. 2) A re-architecting of that part of the application that will cleanly resolve the performance problem with efficient use of caching. Total time: a week. If you choose option 2, you're a moron (sorry, no other way to put it). Option 1 obviously increases your net worth. Yes, you need to go back and do 2) as well, but this is a pretty damn good scenario where it makes a lot of sense to write and ship bad code knowingly. And yes, it does increase your net worth - those zillions of users might stick around instead of claiming your app's broken and moving on.