Efficient--Not Perfect--Code

Code quality is a balancing act: we can't afford to build perfect code because the benefit doesn't outweight the cost in time to get there. As a business we want efficient code (i.e., organized, concise, simple) and we want to create code that achieves that goal as cheaply as possible (in terms of time and money). But we also don't want cheap code because without enough thought and effort devoted to orgnanizing it into a consistent and intuitive pattern we will be building up layer upon layer of cruft (tech debt). Patch upon path adds up to spaghetti.

We want code that is solid, but not as solid as a diamond (diamonds take a long time to form). We want it looser than a diamond, but not so loose that it becomes spaghetti. Something inbetween. Code that is easy to change, easy to adapt, easy to pivot, is code that is organized, intuitive, and concise enough to be manipulated (not tightly coupled, not bound to specific test cases, but also not a mess).