I've had the same experience in my career. I really do wonder how much of YAGNI is only learned through experience. Earlier in my career, I wanted everything to

I've had the same experience in my career. I really do wonder how much of YAGNI is only learned through experience. Earlier in my career, I wanted everything to be more perfect, and I wanted to make sure I fully designed for all eventualities in my code. Nowadays, I know I can program myself out of a bad situation if it arises, so I don't try to cover all my bases, but I do make sure I'm aware of what could go wrong. If I make a note to "fix it later", it just means, this could be bad, but might not be, so I might fix, but I might not either. If it ends up blowing up, it should be obvious to me at the point that I make the decision how bad it could really be, what the ramifications are, and how easy it is to fix or detect. With experience, you can play a bit more fast and loose with what you decide to do or not do, but it requires a lot of other skills, such as designing defensively, such that if something does go wrong, it's easily detected and doesn't cause irreversible damage to data.