I agree with you, though I am not necessarily talking about "cutting corners", which to me implies slopiness. It's just that you can optimise for a certain envi

I agree with you, though I am not necessarily talking about "cutting corners", which to me implies slopiness. It's just that you can optimise for a certain environment of use, but if you don't realise that the software will be used 10 years from now, you don't worry about how the usage environment will change. This isn't sloppiness, it's optimisation - as the old saying goes, the perfect race car is the one that falls apart 10 yards past the finishing line; if it lasts for longer it was overengineered. It's just that in software we don't know where the finish line is - or even if there is one.