[mattgreenrocks]

> In the vast majority of cases, writing good, maintainable code does not require more time

Yep. Especially with practice. You can pretty much get to a point where you build things reasonably well by default without even thinking too hard about it. You have to want to attain it, and be willing to ruthlessly evaluate and file down your design repeatedly.

I believe there's a compounding effect at play here, which accounts for super-linear gains in ability, given enough focus, time, maturity, and number of projects.

[hinkley]

> You can pretty much get to a point where you build things reasonably well by default without even thinking too hard about it.

That's mastery. There are probably about as many master programmers as there were master... let's say blacksmiths. The problem is there are 10, 20, maybe 50 times as many programmers as we ever had journeymen blacksmiths. And they all seem to think that tenure equals mastery. If we had 10, 20, 50 times as many masters, we'd have enough people to keep an eye on things. But we don't.

[biorach]

> that's mastery

Sounds more like competence

[tmtvl]

Nah, competence means that with some effort you can make things that work well enough, if you don't need to put in such effort it's mastery.

[BlackjackCF]

I equate it a lot to writing an essay. Once you’ve gotten enough practice, you know the general structure. You’ll write a draft and then do some edits with some red ink. Then, if you have people willing to reas it, you get their eyes on it.