"I have begun to think now that the most important thing when writing software is to write the usable minimum. If then the tool becomes popular and other people

"I have begun to think now that the most important thing when writing software is to write the usable minimum. If then the tool becomes popular and other people begin to use it, then I should I work on the documentation and interface." That. Like someone pointed out, I find that documenting and testing the key parts (that is, those I know at least I will reuse) is always a good investment of my time and prevents major headaches down the road. I've been experimenting with project structures that clearly separates the set of tools and functions that will be reusable, and those that are one shot. I focus all my testing efforts on former, and cut myself some slack on the latter. Btw, I speak from a "scientist" perspective, and nothing I say applies to professional software engineering (I mean, I don't think it does).