[examancer]

I think most of us want our code to see the light of day. If given an actual problem to solve, we aren't going to toil away at tiny details forever. We want to see it run!

A good manager knows this and will give you room to find that balance yourself, unless you have demonstrated you need help with that.

[cpeterso]

I read an interesting twist on perfectionism: try to the "perfect compromise". Quality has multiple dimensions and you can't optimize all of them perfectly. Instead, choose which dimension is actually most important for the current problem and prioritize it.

[taneq]

A few years ago I invented[1] the term 'acceptimal', meaning 'acceptably optimal'. It's not the absolute best solution, but it's a pragmatic compromise between time, cost, performance, and simplicity which performs acceptably close to optimally.

[1] Or at least I've never heard anyone else use it who didn't get it from me.