Maybe I am being idealistic, but I think the sentiment in the discussion concerns not only the ideal coding techniques themselves, but also the bigger picture of business needs. That is, if we took the approach of keeping code in somewhat decent shape, we would end up, in the long run, producing the whole system more efficiently, and reducing the TCO of the system for the user and the business.

I certainly hope that the discussion is not only about making the lives of the programmers easier.