Big design up front? Seems like a lot of your advice flies in the face of prevailing agile principles.
What do you think about YAGNI?
http://bit.ly/cpbljR (YAGNI Wikipedia article -- apparently HN doesn't like apostrophes in urls.)
What do you think about YAGNI?
http://bit.ly/cpbljR (YAGNI Wikipedia article -- apparently HN doesn't like apostrophes in urls.)
I gave no advice. I shared my experience. Take it or leave it.
What do you think about YAGNI?
Never gave it much thought before. But after reading your referral, let me rephrase the question: "How do you know what you're going to need?"
After servicing hundreds of customers, I built a framework that provided what over 90% of had already needed. I figured it was a pretty good bet most new customers would too. So far it's worked out great. The framework has easily replaced one or two other programmers.
But then again, that isn't even what the original question was about. OP asked the #1 thing that made me a better programmer. This was the #1 answer by far. I think everyone should write a framework, whether you need one or not. You'll never think the same way again.
[Citation Needed]