Comment by jldugger

> On what time scale? In a year, sure. But there are certainly days (weeks?) where the actual value produced by any one engineer is zero, or negative.

Well, that's what I had in mind, but the concept is why agile focuses on shipping early and often. Well, mostly it's to get in more feedback iterations, but engineer hours are not immune to time-value of money analysis.

> This is a categorically stupid thing to assert. It's a stupid thing to say and it's a stupid thing to believe. Payroll is an immediate cost, paying for the development of software is not remotely the same thing as purchasing a capital asset

But it's also not like paying a janitor to clean toilets and empty wastebins where we know there's no residual value accruing to the employer. Companies do buy and sell intellectual property in the form of copyrighted code, and in the form of patents. Heck, ARM basically makes a living licensing out the cores it designs.

This obviously isn't perfect and the disparate impact has unintended consequences that could make things worse overall, but the accusations against the senate are a non-sequitor given the power of the purse lies in the House.