the "write good code" economy (and the loop)
writing code isn’t the hard part. writing good code is.
but here’s the thing—most systems don’t actually reward good code. they reward more code. employees get paid to ship features, not to refactor or clean up technical debt. bounties reward the first PR that “works,” not necessarily the best one. even open source, the closest thing we have to a meritocratic coding system, still runs mostly on passion and free labor.
but what if good code was the economy itself?
imagine an ecosystem where writing high-quality, reusable code is what makes you money. where your contributions aren’t valued just because they exist, but because they’re used. because they’re trusted. because they’re good.
it already kind of exists. people chase github stars for credibility. but what if stars were money? what if every line of well-written, reusable, and widely adopted code meant real economic value? suddenly, writing clean, modular, and maintainable code isn’t just an ethic—it’s an incentive.
good code --> reused code --> better code --> more reuse --> ...
that’s the loop.
- incentivize writing good code—not just code.
- make reusability frictionless—so the best code gets leveraged, not rewritten.
- repeat—every generation of developers builds on the best code from before, making everything exponentially better.
this is bigger than open source. this is open source on steroids. because when the incentive aligns with quality, we don’t just get more code—we get better code. and when better code compounds, everything moves faster.
this is what i want to build with gno. a system where the best engineers aren’t the ones who write the most code, but the ones who write the best code. where good code isn’t just a philosophy—it’s the economy itself.
open source proved that people love writing great code for free. now imagine what happens when we make it worth something.
