> That was because coding was expensive and we needed to be sure we didn't code the wrong thing.

Coding has never been expensive as it is nothing more than a reification of a solution to a problem as it is understood at that time.

It is the underlying understanding of the problem which has always been expensive and remains so.

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lz400 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Coding was expensive in the sense that once you decided what to do, it took a few engineers months / years to do moderately complex projects. That's not true anymore. Therefore the risk of "coding the wrong thing" is less.

	▲	gmueckl an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Is it? The temptation to start without a thorough design is now much stronger because the implementation osnperceived to be cheap and easy to replace. But if you start building the wrong thing fast, you still get the right thing later than when you had checked properly at the start.