While I agree with most of what has been written, I think it's necessary to point out one of my key tenets with software development: code (good or bad) must e

While I agree with most of what has been written, I think it's necessary to point out one of my key tenets with software development: code (good or bad) must earn the right to be improved (i.e., optimized, de-suckified, etc.). For an entrepreneur this means that 99.9% of the sucky code written should stay that way...because no one will ever use it. Write something that "works" and then see how and how much it is used before going on to optimize. It's not a binary question of sucks vs. doesn't suck. It is a question of how much of an issue the suckiness is creating. I'll spend 100X the time trying to improve beautifully written code that is taking up the largest chunk of CPU time rather than focus on a function that is rarely used but makes me throw up in my mouth when I see it.