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> Code bases that you "work in" (maintain, etc) solve real world problems, and solving those problems should trump cleanliness every time

Only if you value your time more than the users’ time and your fellow developer time. Code are run and read more than they are written. You may need to do some hacky coding, but they should be small in scope, surrounded by warning, and have a ticket filed for properly resolving the issue. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.



Outside of opensource developers do not suggest what code is written.

Sales does.

If the developers say something like "well this will take 3 weeks longer to do correctly". They'll be replaced by the code monkey that can turn a POC over to the customer in 3 days.

Reality does not live up to our dreams.


You must have worked in some pretty dysfunctional organizations. Nobody just says "it will take 3 weeks longer to do correctly" - they'll say "if we skip X, then it will potentially result in Y; or we can do Z which will take a little longer but will not have this potential business risk".

You gotta use the language that folks speak in order to get your point across.


> “well this will take 3 weeks longer to do correctly".

Well, I haven’t met any experienced developers that say this sentence. It’s career suicide in most cases. More often, an agreement about scope and delivery is reached and workload gets reshuffled. Customer battling with POCs to get their tasks done are soon to be ex-customers.




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