Code Is a Liability

Code Is a Liability

Lately, people get excited about "vibe coding" and reverse engineering. I see repos rewriting commercial software in Rust, and engineers replacing third-party tools with in-house AI scripts in a weekend.

Some leaders now believe SaaS is dying. Why pay thousands of dollars for software when a few prompts can build an internal clone?

After twenty years in software, I have seen this euphoria before. It is the classic trap: confusing a working demo with a production system.

Generating code is maybe 15% of the work. The rest is invisible: edge cases, zero-day CVEs, data integrity, 3am on-call duty, and angry users when a transaction fails.

Most people forget that code is never an asset. Every line of code you write is a liability. It is debt you must pay interest on through daily maintenance.

When companies buy SaaS, they do not just buy code. They buy compliance, domain knowledge, and risk transfer. A payroll tool is not hard because of the math. It is hard because tax laws change every quarter.

If every company builds their own tools with AI, we will soon drown in thousands of fragmented, undocumented systems. And when the person who prompted that code leaves, nobody will dare touch the legacy box.

AI and reverse engineering are great tools. They help us cut bloat and move fast. But they cannot replace system architecture, operational discipline, or risk management.

Building something that runs takes a few days. Keeping it alive, secure, and useful for years is where real engineering begins.