Typically startups should validate an idea. And in these cases, you can live with ugly code, with no tests. You might not believe me, but when you just validate the idea, it might be good craftsmanship to work exactly like this!Now, some applications should live for 5, 10, 15 years. Applications whole companies and lots of people rely on daily. Applications that can save or hurt human lives, and transact billions, contain extremely sensitive data. In Flexiana, 80% of the time, we are building exactly these systems.

So please, the following points are here for a reason:

• There is no dead code
• There is no code nobody wants to touch
• There is no untested code
• Refactoring is always allowed
• Testing is always allowed

No dead code

You use Git. Maybe you use Feature Toggles. Maybe you Branch by Abstraction (https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/BranchByAbstraction.html). When you know that code is commented or nobody is calling it, take steps that will remove this code from your app.

You might just delete it

You might isolate it to a library. In certain situations, you could even open-source this for others.

You might stop importing it and keep the code for further import if you know that you will need the code shortly.

If you don't expect the code to be used anytime soon, don't keep it. A shorter codebase is easier to understand, easier to change, easier to learn for new colleagues, easier to debug, easier to test, and easier to document