Indeed - I personally think that half the problem with a lot of the software I've worked with is people getting addicted to the idea of just making stuff work a

Indeed - I personally think that half the problem with a lot of the software I've worked with is people getting addicted to the idea of just making stuff work and judging quality against that. Any mysterious problems with maintainability / performance / the groans of your colleagues are just strange outside problems that have nothing to do with you and can't be helped and they really should shut up with their new-fangled silly ideas - my stuff works and surely that's what matters? A typical quote from these people might be 'the user doesn't care about the implementation details' - that's true, in the same way a car owner doesn't care if the car's engine is made out of cheese. Somewhat understandably people start to form an ego around this idea, making it harder and harder for them to assess whether there might be better means of engineering their software. As with much of software engineering, the problem is with the wetware rather than the (soft|hard)ware :)