How is software valued? Lines of code, number of users or maybe just based on its development cost?

Li Hongyi has written a great post on How to Build Good Software. I highly recommend anyone to read it.

My main takeaway for value in software is :

Software Is about Developing Knowledge More than Writing Code

In software development, most ideas are bad; this is not anyone’s fault. It is just that the number of possible ideas is so large that any particular idea is probably not going to work, even if it was chosen very carefully and intelligently. To make progress, you need to start with a bunch of bad ideas, discard the worst, and evolve the most promising ones.

Prototyping is essential for great software development.

Software should be treated not as a static product, but as a living manifestation of the development team’s collective understanding.

My conclusion is then that the true value of software is the developing team that created it. They have the knowledge of what is included in the system, but more importantly what is excluded.