> Something I would like the programming world to discuss is that it isn't the best coded product that wins - technical quality rarely matters
That depends. If by code quality you mean living up to every aesthetic whim and being fiddly over inconsequential details, then no, it doesn't matter. On the other hand, for any code base that lives through a few pivots the conceptual integrity of the architecture starts to break down. At every juncture you can just power through with a quick hack to ship the feature, but over time you are weaving yourself a rat's nest of unmaintainable code. If you have to do this to win the customer, so be it, but at some point this does catch up to you, and you will fail oh so very hard.
That depends. If by code quality you mean living up to every aesthetic whim and being fiddly over inconsequential details, then no, it doesn't matter. On the other hand, for any code base that lives through a few pivots the conceptual integrity of the architecture starts to break down. At every juncture you can just power through with a quick hack to ship the feature, but over time you are weaving yourself a rat's nest of unmaintainable code. If you have to do this to win the customer, so be it, but at some point this does catch up to you, and you will fail oh so very hard.