@freemo I have to say the kid’s not wrong if you look at the absolutely astronomical toll that technical debt and the lack of financial support for keystone FLOSS projects until a bug causes everything to fall apart (see log4j, for example). That’s not to say that some level of technical debt isn’t acceptable, but we have accumulating debt due to running a near constant technical deficit, which is bad for literally everyone and everything except the bottom line.

I suspect the kid (and I) would prefer a “software as craftsmanship” mentality, where you can still charge for your work, but you are compensated for the quality and time spent on a well designed, extensible, thoroughly tested solution rather than on the first PR that makes it into prod that ends up breaking everything because of strict deadlines. This rushed mentality prevents people from actually engaging with and understanding the problem and solution spaces thoroughly and being able to take true pride in refining their work. Imagine comparing custom woodworking from real wood to ikea and preferring the latter because it’s cheaper, even though the latter breaks under some very light loads by comparison.

Reward quality work over “rate at which you can add new features that nobody cares about except management” and I think we get a better software engineering culture.