[pil0u]

My formatted-by-productivity-standards brain agrees, my heart disagrees.

I enjoy the art of programming. I love to think that, for certain types of projects, I am allowed to aim for and reach perfection.

My vision of perfection is not yours, so what. If your "good enough" is actually your perfection because of business impact, user happiness or optimal time management, good for you. Just don't tell me that my perfection does not exist.

Sometimes, it's good to know that you can do something just for the beauty of it, and programming could (should!) be one of them.

[javaunsafe2019]

The funny thing with this is, that often times someone’s perfect is someone else’s future headache.

[sam_lowry_]

It's more subtle that that. There is a great saying "Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live".

I've seen countless bright minds wonder in the pursuit of instant pleasure by adding unnecessary complexity. I have seen others outright sacrificing projects that support people's life to achieve an instant goal of learning a particular library or acquire a useful skill or worse make a point against an imaginary adversary.

Due to the incompetent management, these suckers are never punished. They usually jump board and venture into greener pastures before their playgrounds turns into bloody combat fields where much less sophisticated but more honest former colleagues die or deliver.

[javaunsafe2019]

Really? The best peer coders I have met always produced simple solutions straight forward solutions.

So I can not share this experience.

[stcg]

A similar saying, which I like more: "code as if your (hypothetical) children will have to maintain it"

[a1369209993]

Another alternative: "Code as if you'll have to come back and maintain this after you've completely forgotten how it works or that it ever existed, because there's a nontrivial chance that you will.".

[hinkley]

I call that Tuesday.

Or this week, Saturday.