Jonathon Blow had a great talk on the topic of programming indie games, http://the-witness.net/news/2011/06/how-to-program-independe... One part he mentions how when he was a more novice programmer and looking at the Doom1 source code he thought they made some horrible programming choices - but only once he actually started to try to make commercial products himself did he realize none of that mattered. When the goal is to make good products with very little resources (which is the defining aspect of being indie) being pragmatic is the most important thing.

what you would consider 'good code' wasn't Notch's goal, doesn't mean he isn't capable of it