First off, I must admit that I'm a pretty obsessive coder with very strict rules for myself about commenting, lines per module, etc. and I realize not everyone writes the same way I do. But the way some people approach software development is unforgivable.

There is a person I work with who is not quite my boss (but has seniority so his opinion does matter) who consistently instructs me to take shortcuts instead of doing the job right. I have learned through experience, however, that short cuts take twice as long as the "right" way, not to mention you end up with a completely unmaintainable mess in the end. Careful, thought out, structured code always in my experience yields a better product that is in the end faster to market.

We were going through this all again (he was proposing yet another short cut) today and he said that ending up with messy code is a "good thing" because then the client would have to extend the contract so we could fix it. That just about sent me through the roof (hence the rant). I just can't believe that people out there have this kind of attitude, but he was serious. I take more pride in my work than that, not to mention I don't want to keep working on the same piece of software for the rest of my life. We've butt heads a couple of times over this, but I always beat deadlines so he really hasn't been able to fault my methods. Still, if he ever forces me to take a short cut I'll have to do it, and that's when my resume will go out.

OK, I feel better now.