Why I Stopped Chasing Perfect Code (And Started Shipping Instead)

The Wake-Up Call

Look, I'm gonna be honest here.

For the longest time, I was that developer. You know the one. Refactoring code that worked perfectly fine because "it wasn't clean enough." Spending 3 hours naming a variable. Creating abstract factory patterns for a feature that had like... 2 use cases.

I was obsessed with writing "perfect" code.

And honestly? It was holding me back in ways I didn't even realize.

Last year, I was working on this side project. Nothing fancy—just a simple tool to help me track my reading list. I had the MVP ready in like 2 days.

But did I ship it? Nope.

Instead, I spent the next three weeks:

Refactoring the database schema (twice)
Adding TypeScript generics that nobody asked for
Creating a custom hook system that was "more elegant"
Writing unit tests for edge cases that would literally never happen

By the time I was "ready" to launch, I had lost all motivation. The project died in my GitHub graveyard alongside 50 other "almost ready" repos.

Sound familiar?

What Actually Matters

Here's what I've learned after shipping a bunch of stuff that actually got users:

Users Don't Care About Your Architecture

Seriously. Nobody has ever said "Wow, I love this app because the codebase uses dependency injection properly."

They care if:

The thing works
It solves their problem
It doesn't crash

That's literally it.

"Good Enough" Today > "Perfect" Never

There's this quote I keep coming back to:

"Real artists ship." — Steve Jobs

I used to think shipping "unfinished" work was lazy. Now I realize it's the only way to actually learn what matters.

You know what happens when you ship something imperfect? You get feedback. Real feedback from real users. And that feedback is 100x more valuable than any code review.

Refactoring is a Trap (Sometimes)

Don't get me wrong. There's a time and place for clean code. But here's the thing nobody tells you:

You don't know what "clean" looks like until you understand the problem.

And you don't understand the problem until you've shipped something and watched people use it (usually in ways you never expected).

I've rewritten entire features because users wanted something completely different from what I architected. All that "clean code"? Thrown away.

My New Rules

After burning out on perfectionism, here's what I do now:

Ship the ugly version first. Get it in front of users. See if anyone even cares.
Embrace TODO comments. Write // TODO: make this not terrible and move on. You can fix it later if it matters.
Set shipping deadlines. "This feature ships Friday" forces you to cut the nice-to-haves.
Delete code you're proud of. If it doesn't serve the user, it doesn't matter how clever it is.
Ask "does anyone care?" before optimizing anything.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here's what I wish someone told me earlier:

Most of the code we write doesn't matter as much as we think it does. It's gonna get rewritten. It's gonna get deleted. The framework you're using today will be "legacy" in 5 years.

What does matter is building things that help people.

And you can't do that if you never ship.

Anyway, that's my rant for today. Been thinking about this a lot lately.

If you're stuck in perfectionism hell like I was, just... ship the thing. Your future self will thank you.