> Isn't it more useful to think of code not as an asset but as a liability?

In my view yes. I often find it frustrating how much code people will generate to solve a problem that occurs extremely rarely and the consequences are not severe anyway. All of that code is now a liability and must continue to cope with any future changes to the system. No matter how elegantly you think you write code, the easiest code to change is the code that doesn't exist at all.