And believing deadlines are selected according to how long it will take to do the job perfectly is naive. Dealines are selected according to when the product is needed. If I need a script to take care of a frequent problem, I need it before the next occurance of the problem - not two weeks from Tuesday. If that means the code will not be as elegant as it could be - oh well. If it does the job, good enough.

While I agree with your point, I don't like the example.

If I am writing the script you are not getting it until the time after occurance after the next one. Why not? Because before scripting a problem I *really* like to do it by hand once. I find doing that that I see a lot of critical requirements that way which I won't get just trusting someone's description of the problem.

i'm not talking about elegance!
even the most stupid script need to be maintained!

Yes, they do. Sometimes you have to make the concious decision to save time now and pay for it later. That's called reality. It would be better from the programmer's point of view to spend the time and do it right the first time. Unfortunately, that's not always possible.
- email Ozymandias