I think we're in agreement. Though I want to expand on something a bit subtle. Perfect doesn't exist. There's no perfectly written code. If there were it would

I think we're in agreement. Though I want to expand on something a bit subtle. Perfect doesn't exist. There's no perfectly written code. If there were it wouldn't be perfect for long because the environment is constantly changing. After all, code rots. I want to make that clear because it is why I said only a real novice gets roadblocked by perfection. They might have an idea of a perfect solution but anyone with any meaningful experience knows the real world is full of unknown unknowns. (Even with perfect information it's usually not traceable) What's the old joke? Theres two types of software: those with bugs and those nobody uses. So given that, everything else is actually an argument of "what is good enough." Take perfection off the table, it isn't useful here [0] In other words, we're looking for locally optimal solutions, not global. Because global likely doesn't exist[1]. My interpretation of what you said here is the same. We could write down all the (known) conditions of that problem and still not get a perfect solution that works every time. There are good practices, but those aren't bulletproof algorithms to success. They still require interpretation[2]. So the job of the engineer isn't to be a robot that follows instructions to the letter. It is the job you interpret, explore, and discover. It's to implement suboptimal solutions and iterate on them to find better suboptimal solutions. You have to balance short term and long term benefits, such as your hot patch scenario. There's always some trade being made. And that's why the thought terminating cliché is so detrimental, because it at best sidesteps the trade-off conversation and at worst creates willful ignorance of them. [0] perfection is a good target to help align but it is also fundamentally unobtainable. We could say that same thing about utopias. But similarly the inverse (e.g. shit code/dystopia) is easily obtainable. This, I think, is a subtle difference in how we're using the term "perfection". I think you're using it as a guide rather than a literal objective that can be achieved in finite time. Do I have that right? [1] real world problems are very high dimensional and we usually project them into lower dimensions to make solving more tractable. [2] no rule can be so well written that there are no exceptions. (Including this rule)