I always wanted to be better at software engineering, and software design, and getting abstractions right, and all that stuff. I've slowly gotten better at all that, but I didn't know it would come with the tradeoff of being unable to switch it off.
He's a very good engineer and this was well within his ability, but he became hamstrung by the hackiness. He continually complained that it would be unsupportable (I know), that he would be asked to make changes (no: this was explicitly part of the agreement with the customer) and it was a bad design decision (yes!).
By the time 4 o'clock rolled around, he had made little progress on his well engineered and future-proof solution and I didn't want to be there late, so I offered to take it from him, finished the hack by 4:30 and pushed it to the customer.
Customer loved it; greatly appreciated that "we had dropped all our work to put two engineers on their project" and it did exactly what they needed to demo their own product.
I guess my point is that engineering is about getting stuff done. Sometimes, if you know time is more important than anything else, your only choice is either cut corners or don't ship. Being a day late can be the same thing as never shipping in some cases.
It's when something that is being designed and built with the intention of a short lifespan ends up being around for a long time, and causing problems for longer than it was intended to exist at all.
And I think this happens all the time.
I think you did the right thing (I would have too), but unless you have solid consistency, work ethics and a great memory, you may put in that quick fix and it never gets improved.
If the quick fix stands the test of time, then it was the right fix regardless of how fast it was done.
I guess that is why I have grown into the approach over the years of always.. ALWAYS checking expectations thoroughly, even when it hurts a little.
It's important in the early stages of problem analysis to know - 1) how long do I have to analyze the problem? 2) how long do I have to implement a solution to the problem? and 3) how long does the solution need to last? Of course there are a million other questions, but I think it needs to start there. Of course, while answering those questions, as a service function, we must always be thinking... hands down.. what is in the best interest of the customer (which can be subjective, but it must always be the forefront)?
If you are given constraints for those 3 things, you can more accurately come up with an appropriate solution. My experience with this is hard-earned from just doing and always having to get creative.
Sometimes, I plain ask people - do you want a long-term solution, or a short-term solution? If you can come up with 3 options quickly based on your experience - short/mid/long-term and give the pros and cons, I've found most business users like this approach. Some prefer to just be given an answer and have the issue handled immediately - however, that isn't always the best for them nor the people doing the work. But, as they say, sometimes it comes down to "needs must".
i think that's a big part of programming as a career, learning to know when to make something run flawlessly, and when to make it just... run.
Or learning that user has a very different meaning of flawless, and that is almost always the more important definition.
Mediocre now beats great tomorrow more often than not.
Totally Crap -> Less Crappy -> Just Crap -> Starting to get half decent -> Actually not too bad and working -> EOL
This reminds me of Patton's Law of Program Planning from Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design[1]:
> 33. (Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
Put in another way of saying it, when you get tired of the constant pace of change of our toolsets, it becomes more about the problem and solution rather than the specific tool you use to solve it.
Don't get me wrong.. I still do love learning all the latest and greatest, and keeping my hands on the tools. But over time, after a long time of getting distracted (or even disrupted by the "need" to keep learning new stuff), I feel at least that it can get tiring and to the point of interrupting any actual productive labor towards a bigger goal. So I agree with you.
I started a react project a few years ago and opted against Redux and whatnot. As the project grew and grew it became harder to maintain. Piece by piece, I self identified a 'best practice' that would solve a real problem I had.
I'm all about using React without Redux when it makes sense, and especially at the beginning of a project. Heck, I wrote a whole book teaching React that way, and it's how I learned it myself. Wanting to use the "best practice" libraries is a different angle than what I meant though, which was more like a background thread running in my mind about how I should be refactoring things as I go. Two sides of the same coin though, in a lot of respects.