My father was a commercial guy (and a good programmer) who wanted to sell development services to companies, Dijkstra didn't really like this idea, especially if it was done in a way that badly educated (...) people would write not proven correct code was distributed to the clients, making the world worse.

Looking back, they were both right!

That's exactly what ended up happening.

> wanted to sell development services to companies

So he wanted to start a contracting service? Contractors are famous for writing piles of untested, spaghetti code that only kind of works but they've finished it by then and the contract is over. Then some poor sap gets stuck trying to maintain it. Probably one of the worse ways businesses acquire custom software.

It is how most software is written and indeed, often badly. But how do 'businesses acquire custom software' otherwise? Most in house employees suck as well. So what's the other ways?