Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better
People who want to write "beautiful code" are not role models, don't listen to them. They are vain and not productive. Listen to the people who finish correct programs on time, or mostly working prototypes in hours or days.<p>How to recognise the former group: they obsess about coding and other standards and processes, plan and discuss too long how to implement something (plan <i>what</i> to implement, do it, then improve it when it's done; inspiration comes from working on something, not from thinking about it) and never even meet their own estimates for how long it'll take them to deliver. They will tell you they are taking so long because they haven't decided yet how to best implement something, but they don't even have a straightforward implementation (there's always one). If they were truly concerned with "the best way", they'd have several solutions implemented already, together with metrics and benchmarks. They haven't, because they're vain impostors and not capable programmers.