The myth of "never going back to fix it later"

There's a gained knowledge among senior engineers that if you take the shortcut now, expecting to "fix it later", you'll never fix it and it will live on forever.

There's a lot of truth to this in general, but I have an issue with it, having consistently overcome this throughout my work: It's only the truth if the organization does not value refactoring and slowing down the pace when needed.

Having a culture that values going over past work and improving on the shortcuts opens up an organization to make a lot of practical choices in the moment while knowing there will be an opportunity to fix what was broken later.

Knowing nobody will return to improve the code is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Engineers need to fight for a culture that allows for regular refactoring, cooldown work, and general maintenance in times when more information is known about the model we are developing for.

Happy coding