This is something I've been thinking about as I start to adopt more agent-first coding.
There is a real advantage to having good code especially when using agents. "Good Code" makes iteration faster, the agent is unlikely to make mistakes and will continue to produce extensible code that can easily be debugged (by both you and the agent).
A couple months ago I refactored a module that had gotten unweildly, and I tried to test if Claude could add new features on the old code. Opus 4.5 just could not add the feature in the legacy module (which was a monster function that just got feature-crept), but was able to completely one shot it after the refactor.
So there is clear value in having "clean code", but I'm not sure how valuable it is. If even AGI cannot handle tech debt, then there's value is at least building scaffolding (or atleast prompting the scaffolding first). On the other hand there may be a future where the human doesn't concern himself with "clean code" at all: if the value of "clean code" only saves 5 minutes to a sufficiently advanced agent, the scaffolding work is usefuless.
My reference is assembly - I'm in my early 30s and I have never once cared about "clean" assembly. I have cared about the ASM of specific hot functions I have had to optimize, but I've never learned what is proper architecture for assembly programs.
There is a real advantage to having good code especially when using agents. "Good Code" makes iteration faster, the agent is unlikely to make mistakes and will continue to produce extensible code that can easily be debugged (by both you and the agent).
A couple months ago I refactored a module that had gotten unweildly, and I tried to test if Claude could add new features on the old code. Opus 4.5 just could not add the feature in the legacy module (which was a monster function that just got feature-crept), but was able to completely one shot it after the refactor.
So there is clear value in having "clean code", but I'm not sure how valuable it is. If even AGI cannot handle tech debt, then there's value is at least building scaffolding (or atleast prompting the scaffolding first). On the other hand there may be a future where the human doesn't concern himself with "clean code" at all: if the value of "clean code" only saves 5 minutes to a sufficiently advanced agent, the scaffolding work is usefuless.
My reference is assembly - I'm in my early 30s and I have never once cared about "clean" assembly. I have cared about the ASM of specific hot functions I have had to optimize, but I've never learned what is proper architecture for assembly programs.