dO-BoY

At a high level, all software development–perhaps all invention–breaks down into three steps:

1. Build it the way you thought it should work
2. Do it from scratch the way you should have done it to begin with, as you learned during the previous step
3. Optimize step 2 from scratch so you can actually ship it.

And of course, loop on steps 2 and 3 from then on.

Sometimes you’ve done step 1 so often, you hit the ground running with step 2, but not if it’s a new technology. And I can’t say I’ve always gone through all three steps for every project, but I’ve always wished I could.