The Burden of Writing New Code

Producing code comes with costs. No matter how good the code you added was. Do not presume there are only positives to problem-solving by introducing new code.

The biggest burden of code addition is maintenance. A new repository has to be maintained, or it has increased the maintenance effort of an existing repository. If the code you are writing is being added to an existing codebase, the effort required to make future changes has probably increased because larger codebases are harder to work on.

Another burden is context. You just added another thing that your teammates have to build context in. The effort to ramp up has also increased a notch for new engineers.

Also, there is a good chance that you just introduced new bugs by shipping code.

Writing code comes with costs.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. - Alexander Pope