As the lead maintainer of the Wasabi compiler project, it actually feels pretty good to have someone call it duct tape :)

Or just don't short circuit ever, and do the entire computation every time.

Correct. But the total cost of hiring a programmer is easily estimated as 3*salary. $200k/year is a fairly cheap full-time programmer with overhead.

Don't forget to include all the office space, gym membership, soda, insurance, maternity leave, matching 401(k) contributions, hardware, software, internet access, telephone service, tech support, sysadmins, office managers, etc. necessary to support that one programmer.