it's very interesting how many replies i've gotten about maintainability and clean code being still important. i would argue that that is no longer true and we all need to update our priors on what Good Code really means in 2026. clean code has always come at a cost - performance. indirection and making code readable/understandable for a human is not free, it often comes at the cost of worse performance. we have historically been okay with this because of Moore's Law and the fact that most…