I would imagine that the root of all evil is anytime you do something without having a clear goal in doing it. Premature optimization is when you optimize with

I would imagine that the root of all evil is anytime you do something without having a clear goal in doing it. Premature optimization is when you optimize without a slowdown anyone has noticed. Going overboard with architecture is designing for scale when you have had no need to scale. But does the fact that a business will push you to keep delivering new features mean that it's often better to prematurely optimize, prematurely architect, so that you don't end up stuck with code that you hate and can't maintain?