> wasted too much time thinking about the right approach in a neverending, neverprogressing loop to achieve perfection
A CEO from my past often muttered that "perfect software comes at infinite cost". It's key, imo, to identify which components of what you are building _must_ be perfect. The rest can have warts.
"to identify which components of what you are building _must_ be perfect"
Well, but by the words of your former CEO (and my opinion) those parts would then have infinite costs, too... if they really need to be perfect.
I mean, it is awesome, when you do a big feature change and it all just runs smooth without problems, because your design was well thought out, but you cannot think of every future change to come - and when you still try, chances are you get stuck and waste your time and risk the flow of the whole project. I rather tend to think about the current needs first and the immediate future second, but everything after that, I spend not much thought anymore.
Agreed. What I mean by "perfect" is: for a given part/component/decision/etc, take the time (an always-limited resource) to learn as much as possible and contemplate more than just the seemingly obvious path forward. Take security for example. I'd rather 'waste time' now making sure I'm covering any gaps in that realm before shipping.
OTOH maybe some jacked-up abstraction/incorrect tool choice/ugly-ui/etc is something that can wait a few sprints or longer. At least you can plan when to deal with these. Security breaches tend to plan your day for itself on your behalf. :)
A CEO from my past often muttered that "perfect software comes at infinite cost". It's key, imo, to identify which components of what you are building _must_ be perfect. The rest can have warts.