Does code need to be perfect?

Andreas Creten, founder of Made With Love, on different needs in code quality depending on what type of product (POC, MVP, …) you are making.

Until your MVP really gets traction you can run on shitty code or even do things manually to prove you have a product/market fit. Only once you nail it and the customers start flowing in, you should start caring about code, but up until then, you’re almost writing one-off code too.

I especially like this part too:

Every week I talk with people with great ideas, but a tiny budget to execute them. When they ask me what it would cost to build their idea, I answer between 10k and a couple of billion, basically bouncing the question back and asking what they want to spend on it.

To me this quote relates to this chart on value over time:

done-is-better-than-perfect

One can spend a truckload of cash on a certain idea or feature, but let’s face it: the actual value is added in the first few iterations. There’s this point in time where it longer pays off to extensively put work into something. The end result might not be as polished, but it gets things done.

Does code need to be perfect? →

Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

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