Why Racing Probably Will Slow You Down

Many programmers will have gone through the following cycle.

The project time line has been tight from the beginning. Finally the specification gels into a vaguely discernible form, though pretty late. No time any more for architecture, design, and generally engaging the brain before typing. The deadline must be made! Everybody rushes to the goal, best practices and common sense are trampled into the ground, and hackers feel finally freed from those bureaucrats that call themselves architects.

Inevitably the project is late anyways, and the code is a huge mess that will be cleaned up when there is time. That is: never. Time is money; where should the money come from?

The customer? "Hey, the stuff finally works, why would we pay for beautifying the code? And, by the way, don't you guys advertise high coding standards?"

Your own company? "Well, the budget is blown, and the customer won't pay for it! And, by the way, aren't you guys using best practices?"

A good solution would have taken maybe 20 or 30% longer than the ordered estimate. In the end the project consumes the same amount of time. Additionally you get a much poorer result, angry customers, frustrated programmers, and the kind of code that makes you want to switch projects before the next release. Cutting corners when your experts beg for some time to think before coding will buy you nothing in the long run.