The most expensive code I've ever seen wasn't buggy.
It was perfectly written, for problems that never existed.
One pattern kills delivery speed faster than bad architecture, unclear requirements, or team conflict combined.
šš®š»š±š¹š¶š»š“ š³ššššæš² š²š±š“š² š°š®šš²š šÆš²š³š¼šæš² ššµš²š'šæš² šæš²š®š¹.
Here's what it looks like in practice:
"But what if we scale to 10 million users?", raised on day two, with 200 active users.
"What if the client wants to swap databases in three years?", for a product that might not exist in six months.
Teams think they're being responsible engineers. What's actually happening: they're solving for a version of the product that may never exist, while the version that exists today slips behind.
Every hypothetical edge case you solve too early costs you:
ā¢ Delayed features users actually need today
ā¢ Decisions optimized for an imagined future, not the real present
ā¢ Complexity every engineer who touches that code inherits forever
You can always add complexity. You rarely get to remove it.
The rule is simple: šš¼š¹šš² ššµš² š½šæš¼šÆš¹š²šŗ š¶š» š³šæš¼š»š š¼š³ šš¼š, design so you can extend, but don't build the extension until you need it.
That's not cutting corners. That's how you actually ship.
š¬ Tell me about a time your team spent days, or weeks, building something "just in case."
Did it ever get used? And if you could go back, would you still build it?
It was perfectly written, for problems that never existed.
One pattern kills delivery speed faster than bad architecture, unclear requirements, or team conflict combined.
šš®š»š±š¹š¶š»š“ š³ššššæš² š²š±š“š² š°š®šš²š šÆš²š³š¼šæš² ššµš²š'šæš² šæš²š®š¹.
Here's what it looks like in practice:
"But what if we scale to 10 million users?", raised on day two, with 200 active users.
"What if the client wants to swap databases in three years?", for a product that might not exist in six months.
Teams think they're being responsible engineers. What's actually happening: they're solving for a version of the product that may never exist, while the version that exists today slips behind.
Every hypothetical edge case you solve too early costs you:
ā¢ Delayed features users actually need today
ā¢ Decisions optimized for an imagined future, not the real present
ā¢ Complexity every engineer who touches that code inherits forever
You can always add complexity. You rarely get to remove it.
The rule is simple: šš¼š¹šš² ššµš² š½šæš¼šÆš¹š²šŗ š¶š» š³šæš¼š»š š¼š³ šš¼š, design so you can extend, but don't build the extension until you need it.
That's not cutting corners. That's how you actually ship.
š¬ Tell me about a time your team spent days, or weeks, building something "just in case."
Did it ever get used? And if you could go back, would you still build it?