And if you're making, say, a chat app, are you sure you're not going to be beaten by a bunch of 20 year olds who slap together JS and Electron, ultimately winning because they get that people want funny reaction gifs built in?

Maybe it freezes for a half second every so often and takes 10 seconds to load, but no one cares because 1) it gets to market three times faster and 2) it has funny reaction gifs.

Right, this is the part where you first have to internalize the true cost of bugs. You can't keep hiring $12k/yr third world sweatshop programmers if you want reliable software.

> no one cares because 1) it gets to market three times faster and 2) it has funny reaction gifs.

This is absolutely true, but I maintain this is mostly because businesses have an artificially high time preference due to government subsidies of debt, and in a less distorted market people would probably care a lot more about quality.

Often it can be quite advantageous for individual instances, no doubt, but expecting humans to be disciplined en-masse without serious external oppression is a bit like expecting cats to neatly line up for treats.