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> So, assuming we can all make "good enough" code

Your entire argument hinges on "good enough". Problem is: you can never know if something is "good enough", except in hindsight for those products that succeeded.

I'm upvoting you because your comment is well made, and certainly common, even if it is nothing more than a tautology :)

The bar for "good enough" can be set quite low. In general, consumers can be convinced to buy almost anything. And their resistance to good marketing is very weak.

The problem with presenting good examples is that decades of sustained marketing is hard to overcome even with facts which are immediately obvious. Indeed good marketing has already negated those facts.

For example smoking is objectively terrible and yet was (and is) very popular for decades. Tobacco might be out, but vaping is still cool; same message as before.

From outside its easy to spot US examples because their absurdity is obvious to outsiders. It's harder to see examples in one's own society (because we have our own marketers.)

In software land there is obviously lots and lots of complete rubbish. Most of it gets no marketing at all. But is Windows the best OS? Is Chrome the best browser? Is Google the best search engine? Is Facebook the best social network?

Or do each of those have a competitor with "better code" that has no marketing and gets no traction?

When IBM hooked up with MS was it because of good code? When Sun bought MySql was it for the customer base, and Brand, or the code?

Did Facebook buy WhatsApp for 18 billion because of the code? Fo you think they compared the code to some other messenger with 100 users, or did the 400 million people using WhatsApp matter more?

In truth every product you ever heard of, and ever used, was good enough. Github is full of projects with really great code and no users.

There's a fundamental disconnect between business people and codesmiths. The programmer wants another year to craft perfection. The business needs to start selling and earning next week.

Good code lasts longer, and is better for the company in the long run. Engineers know this. Companies know they have to ship, and sell and earn, to survive at all. Engineers sneer at marketing, the product should be good enough. (Tell that to Amiga.) Marketeers are frustrated by Engineers who want to build forever and never ship. (Any wonder they want to replace us with AI.)

Yes AI products are objectively worse. But if history tells us anything; that doesn't matter.

I agree with most of what you're saying.

But was Google the best search engine when they got popular? Most definitely! Chrome the best browser? According to most, yes! When MySQL got popular, that was also due to it being the best free product out there at the time.

That is to say, a good product can easily be the key factor to growth. Especially in the critical early phase. But it'll have to be a lot better than the well-known alternative.

But doesn't your counter point assume all products that failed were not good enough?

Well, at least the combination of code, marketing and luck wasn't good enough.

Sure, but the context here is only about code.

I've been in an acquisition where code quality was important. But it was probably an edge case since the buyer just wanted to turn the company into a feature, and ease of integration into the buyer was important.

> The players are not buying or selling the code.

Counter-point: many acquisitions are not for the code itself but for the engineers who designed and wrote the code. Acquihire is almost exclusively used to describe acquiring engineering talent that can… design systems and write code.

Marketing without a product is called a scam. Marketing with a "good enough" product to sell it is the same.

Sigh.

Bless your heart.