Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey there, author of the post here. I actually agree with this! That is in fact why I used the word maybe — my comment really was meant to be more speculative than definitive.
I think one thing that goes unmentioned is that maybe code quality is really not that important for trivial things, because they can be trivially reproduced if need be. I would argue Claude Code is exactly such a project; coding agents are incredibly simple and rewriting CC wouldn't be much of a problem. Non-trivial things tend to be much more sensitive to code quality in my experience, and will by necessity be kept…
I hear this narrative being pushed quite a bit, and it makes my spidey senses tingle every time. Secure programs are a subset of correct programs, and to write and maintain correct programs you need to have a quality mindset.
A 0-day doesn't care if it's in a part of your computer you consider trivial or not.