Somehow a lot of people have got it into their head that all code is art, that everything is always beautiful, that it makes sense to take the time to make a gr

Somehow a lot of people have got it into their head that all code is art, that everything is always beautiful, that it makes sense to take the time to make a great design for solving every problem, that if you aren't working with beautiful code then you aren't a good developer. That's all nonsense. Think about other engineering disciplines - "okay" engineers can build new bridges, great engineers can cheaply fix existing bridges so they never fail again. It is the same with software. Good engineers make new programs, and whenever they see a problem, they start from scratch, wasting time and money. Great engineers massage existing code into something amazing, increasing efficiency without breaking the bank. As a side effect, if you make something crappy more reliable, it makes the creator look bad, as they should. Otherwise, you will look bad.