A simple way to "get more people to code" 12 years ago
I think that one of the reasons we see so much bad code, is that customers have a very hard time evaluating the quality of the code, and therefore both problems could be solved by learning more people how to write code.
I feel that I can write as bad code as I want to, and still get away with it (not that I do it), since nobody realizes it is bad until another programmer works on it which might be years later, or even never.
If bad programmers were identified easier, they would be forced to go out of business or start to make better programs! And with more people that can actually code, people wouldn't be forced to choose the bad programmers.