Code as Liability

Code is a liability, not an asset: every line has to be maintained, secured, understood and migrated. The value is in what the code does, so the same functionality with less code is better. A line from Software Engineering at Google.

Source: Software Engineering at Google (free online).

See also: Deprecation Policy, Hyrums Law, Subtraction Neglect. From How do organizations throw (AI) stuff away?

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# Oct 23, 2026