Comment by gf000

That's a good way to put it, but still my experience is that worse code bases are non-linearly harder to maintain and improve in the future, software tends to break down without a good enough base.

Sure, in the future full rewrites and stuff like that will be just another "throw money at it" problem, but fundamentally software can get arbitrary complex and we barely know how to write large, maintainable code bases.

Nonetheless, I think testing (and maybe proofs) will have its long-awaited time to shine, as being the "reward function".