Sure, in the metaphysical sense does anything really matter?
But as a business owner, you don't want your business to die and be replaced by someone else's business due to technical debt. Just because it's hard to quantify the cost of technical debt doesn't mean it isn't real and we should just throw up our hands in defeat.
And lest you think I'm some sort of artisanal code hipster, I spent years building freelance custom web apps in the $1k-$20k budget range, so I know how to fucking ship. Also, I've been the tech lead on a Rails monolith powering a 7-figure revenue startup for 10 years, taking it from Rails 1.2 through Rails 4.2 one version at a time.
Knowing how code rot will happen and how business logic will change is impossible to be sure about, but having some instincts can save a ton of money down the line. I've received thank you notes for architectural decisions and commit messages I wrote years ago and had long since forgotten. Not all businesses will be able to recognize that such value even exists, and the ones that don't are likely to be a shit show that will never be able to attract an upper echelon of developers.
The right attitude and experience about code quality can be a huge competitive advantage.
But as a business owner, you don't want your business to die and be replaced by someone else's business due to technical debt. Just because it's hard to quantify the cost of technical debt doesn't mean it isn't real and we should just throw up our hands in defeat.
And lest you think I'm some sort of artisanal code hipster, I spent years building freelance custom web apps in the $1k-$20k budget range, so I know how to fucking ship. Also, I've been the tech lead on a Rails monolith powering a 7-figure revenue startup for 10 years, taking it from Rails 1.2 through Rails 4.2 one version at a time.
Knowing how code rot will happen and how business logic will change is impossible to be sure about, but having some instincts can save a ton of money down the line. I've received thank you notes for architectural decisions and commit messages I wrote years ago and had long since forgotten. Not all businesses will be able to recognize that such value even exists, and the ones that don't are likely to be a shit show that will never be able to attract an upper echelon of developers.
The right attitude and experience about code quality can be a huge competitive advantage.