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I've been fixing "this is just a prototype" code for most of my professional life. Dont do that. Write good code, dont write shitty code and promise youll fix i

I've been fixing "this is just a prototype" code for most of my professional life. Dont do that. Write good code, dont write shitty code and promise youll fix it -- you wont. What this ends up looking like is really: - write shitty code with the excuse that you could do better, and youll fix it later - fix it up later by tacking on dirty fixes and removing good code others added to fix specific problem (ignoring chestertons fence) - then get tired and rewrite it entirely, throwing away all progress. Except for the parts where you just copy paste your old shit because everyone forgot how it works

sanderjd 3y ago
See, I share your experience of spending most of my time improving things that aren't great, but I see it as a good thing. A full two thirds of "do it, do it right, do it better" is about making improvements to something that is already working and useful. Sure, there is some inefficiency in re-doing already-working things to improve them, but in my view, less so than in spending more time creating a more perfect thing, but which is often the wrong solution or a solution to the wrong problem altogether. If it were possible to perfectly know that you are creating the definite right solution to the definite right problem, then sure, go nuts! But in the real world this is essentially never the case, so it is better to first "do it", then if that "it" turns out to be useful, to "do it right", and then since that still inevitably won't actually be "right", to "do it better", and then to "do it better" again and again, until "it" is no longer useful.