>“If it makes you feel any better, there's a way in which having a big mess is a sign of success. The reason your competitors don't have messes is that they went out of business. You won, and your prize is an application that betrays the ravages of time.”<p>I didn't read the whole article, and that's certainly one way of looking at it. Here is another. That lack of maintainability and flexibility in a core codebase will leave your system in what's essentially cement shoes. Your team will have painted themselves in a corner and things that take hours or days in a nimble team with a nimble codebase will take weeks or months. That's fine most of the time if you're established in your industry, raking in the cash. That is until your industry pivots, and it will pivot. When it does, your team will not be able to pivot and will be included in the "out of business" companies mentioned above.<p>You don't have to have every algorithm tuned to computer's science's optimal guidance, you just have to have a maintainable system that can adjust to the business environment. I've been at plenty of large companies that can't adapt by adding new features because all the original programmers left, and management is to scared to touch the system for good reason, the codebase is a horrendous, unmaintainable mess.
My lead taught me at my internship that "working code is better than no code. As you get better and come back to it, your working code will eventually be clean code." We have a super small team so my lead can easily say those things, but I have learned to agree. Get the product to work. Who cares if you've got a function with inefficient algorithms right now. You've got a deadline and something that works fine. You can just throw a TODO on there, set a calendar reminder, and check back later. It's not pretty and yeah it may be like three nested for loops, recursion, and a really indented mess, but so what. It works, and you can follow it. In the business world, all that matters is results. When management is happy, you can go back and fix that thing you now have some extra time for. If not, just make note of it so the next person coming in is aware it's bad code. No harm no foul. It just comes with the territory.
<i>Start by making your plan digestible.</i> My favorite quote from the article.<p>Even though the future is unpredictable, we can at least be clear on where we are going.