I can't agree more! With one project, Redmist has encapsulated a lot... The first thing I learned as a professional developer is: A Good Design is *the* most critical thing in a project. This is fundamental advice given over and over, and it's so very true. A good design will save you 90% of the hassles involved in coding- and will mean the difference between a 10 day project and a 10 month project.

I've also learned that whether you realize it or not, much of your code and thought is going to be geared towards repeated code. The master of implementation is someone who quickly realizes common data structures, pitfalls, and manages to automated them...