Cheap Code Is Not Cheap to Keep | Mishka Kofman on Technical Debt in the Age of AI

The Operating System Show · Oct 27, 2026 · 45m

Mishka Kofman has been writing software for 28 years, from Madden at EA to AWS. Today he runs Paracorp and builds ARC, a platform that modernizes legacy software by pulling out every business rule and rebuilding the system around them. His warning for owners: AI made code cheap to write, and it did nothing to make code cheap to keep. Teams are shipping faster than ever and creating debt faster than ever, and most leaders cannot see what it is costing them. His rule for build versus buy is simple. Buy what is not central to you. Build what holds your business rules and gives you an edge. ## In…