This is not the feel-good "ye olde ways are always better" post that the headline suggests. This is a quick-and-dirty ship it by tomorrow™ and we will worry about building it properly later.
This strikes me as funny: what could "properly" mean to an industry if a successfully launched and operational piece of software serving clients globally somehow doesn't meet the requirements.
I think this talk of "proper" is just purism, its not grounded in reality or sound engineering practices.
The article should be lauded as kicking off a new era of practical engineering that rejects software purism.
You're basically arguing there is no such thing as tech debt, if a software works, then there can be nothing wrong with it. I would think this is obviously false.
That hardly meets all the requirements of a global and ambitious live service that has to move fast to gain traction against established, experienced and aggressive competitors.
It's a valid tradeoff and a successful launch, but it's ok to say it's "not properly built" for what comes next.
Again, what is this based on. Mostly on the fact that they reused existing parts to build a new service?
Why is this alone something to frown upon and conclude it is achieved by being "a mess under the hood"?
Maybe it is a mess, maybe it isn't. There's no reason to conclude this, other than the fact that there was reuse.
Hence purism.
EDIT: actually the software devs mention introducing tech-debt themselves, my bad.
They are not selling shrink-wrapped software. “Operational” is a moving, evolving target.
They could have definitely spent 12-24 months building the platform diligently from naught, but they'd have the same end product, just 12 months too late. The demand could have been satisfied by any one of several players in the industry (Tiktok, bluesky, LinkedIn, Twitter itself, Snapchat, a resurrected MySpace, etc), so rushing to gain first-mover advantage was likely the singular consideration for the project.