zlacker

Professional developers should strive to write the highest quality code they can given the constraints of the project. That's pretty much a given. I'm only arguing that customers don't seem to care, not that we shouldn't care.

>>onion2+(OP)
Exactly.

I read a book, where one of the characters is a smith. It has this exchange, between him, and another character:

    "Always do the very best job you can," he said on another occasion as he put a last few finishing touches with a file on the metal parts of a wagon tongue he was repairing.
    "But that piece goes underneath," Garion said. "No one will ever see it."
    "But I know it's there," Durnik said, still smoothing the metal. "If it isn't done as well as I can do it, I'll be ashamed every time I see this wagon go by -and I'll see the wagon every day.”

>>ChrisM+T1
One reason I like this kind of work is that it implies when someone spent that much effort on an irrelevant detail they probably paid attention to important parts as well. Not always the case but yeah.

>>moonch+e7
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

- [Probably erroneously] ascribed to Aristotle

But naysayers will say we are "bikeshedding."

Meh. Whatevs. I do things the way I do.

>>ChrisM+zc
It’s a paraphrase, but the origin is indeed Aristotle.

http://www.universalethics.org/Ideas/Virtue_as_a_habit.htm