GOOD Code is Still Expensive

Writing code is cheap now - Simon Willison's Weblog

Delivering new code has dropped in price to almost free... but delivering good code remains significantly more expensive than that.

Why is good code expensive? It's tested, documented, accessible, reliable, secure, maintainable, and observable.

Coding agent tools can help with most of this, but there is still a substantial burden on the developer driving those tools to ensure that the produced code is good code