Patina
The Japanese call it wabi-sabi: beauty in impermanence, in the marks that time leaves. A 60-year-old cast iron skillet, surface black and glossy from decades of seasoning, releases eggs without sticking. A new Lodge pan from Amazon takes two years of daily use to reach half that performance.
The difference is accumulated use. The patina is the record.
Leather straps mold to the wrist over three years — edges darkening where sweat concentrates, surface softening where the material bends. Raw selvedge denim fades along the creases of the body: behind the knees, across the thighs, around the phone in the pocket. The fabric records how its owner sits, walks, carries weight.
Cheap denim fades evenly, then falls apart. Quality denim records the wearer.
The same pattern appears in code. A well-maintained codebase at year five shows character: naming conventions that evolved through use, abstractions that earned their complexity, comments that mark hard-won lessons. A neglected codebase at year five shows rot: dead code paths, mystery functions, layers of workaround stacked on workaround.
Both show their age. One becomes more useful. One becomes more fragile.
The question materials answer over time: does wear make this better or worse? Quality materials patina. Cheap materials degrade.