Q/A with Dan Abramov via hashnode.com

Question for Dan: “What have you learned after working at Facebook for almost two years?”

He gave a response with a number of bullet points, but this one stood out to me:

Think about code in time. Don't stop at thinking about the code as it is now. Think about how it evolves. How a pattern you introduce to the codebase might get copy and pasted all over the place. How the code you're spending time prettying up will be deleted anyway. How the hack you added will slow down the team in the long run. How the hack you added will speed up the team in the short term. These are tradeoffs, not rules. We operate on tradeoffs all the time and we must always use our heads. Both clean and dirty code can help or prevent you from reaching your goals.