Short Read: Code for Tomorrow, Balancing Timelines and Maintainability

Remember, code is your house, and you have to live in it. — Michael C. Feathers

Timelines are always an inescapable constraint in software engineering.

With the pressure of timelines, it is tempting to focus more on writing code that works vs. writing something clean and maintainable.

But remember, the code you write today is the code you live with tomorrow.

If you skip the nonfunctional requirements and there is a production issue, you wake up at night to deal with it.

If you don’t focus on making your code organized, modular, and reusable today, then the next feature will take even longer to write.

It’s better to do it right the first time, maybe taking some extra time, than to spend countless hours living with the mess you’ve created.

I’ve never regretted taking the extra time to do it right, but I’ve often regretted not.

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