[dasil003]

> When you start without a clue of what sustainable value you can provide, most of your problems are invented problems.

What an obscene strawman.

The point isn't that you go into it without a clue what you are doing. The point is that you learn so much faster once you actually have something out there. Before that you are living in a fantasy world where many assumptions both large and small will turn out to be false.

Software development practices are not so binary. They are on a continuum from NASA-like pursuit of perfection down to hackathon throwaway code. You need to decide what is appropriate for the problem at hand and the stage of your company. If you insist there is only one acceptable standard of quality then I'll run circles around you in terms of converging on the right solutions to the right problems just by writing one off shell scripts while you are busy setting up your testing framework and assertions to prove that what you are doing is correct.