common justifications for polishing code

Here are some of the most common justifications I hear for spending more time on changing code than shipping it. I’ll explain each in more detail in future posts, but as a preview I’ll say that the general position I take with each of these is that they are more often used to justify unhelpful outcomes than resulting in positive outcomes.

• because cleanliness
• because efficiency
• because scaling
• because generalization
• because edge cases
• because authority