Great engineers ship. It's helpful to remember that no matter what you write, someone will be able to criticize it. It's a lot easier to write code that does

Great engineers ship. It's helpful to remember that no matter what you write, someone will be able to criticize it. It's a lot easier to write code that does its job than it is to write code that's going to be critically evaluated by a huge panel of theoretical, hyper-critical programming gods. A good thing to do when you find yourself paralyzed in a rut is to tell yourself you're going to write the first one as a throw-away prototype, whose purpose in life is to explore the solution space and learn what you need to do it right. Give yourself the freedom to do whatever on that first version. The learning is always the most valuable part of any deliverable anyway.