[taeric]

The single most dangerous thing I learned was that "cleaning" as you go and the "intrinsic quality of the code" were somehow paramount.

I'm not against the ideas, per se. But they have a cost. And at the end of the day the quality of the product you are building is far more important than any intrinsic quality of the product. Worse, it would be nice if they correlated, at the least. They don't seem to, IME. I'd be welcome to data showing otherwise. Make sure you understand your budget. And for the love of god, realize that idioms in the codebase and in the general programmer pool are more important than purity of some style.