Comment by throwawee

I think there's a missing distinction here between "Just do X!" and "Can we just do X?" The latter is a legitimate question and positive thing.

I was once asked if I could just do X and I said I'd have to spend hours ripping out Y and debugging its replacement. It'd slow down development and if there were any features from X they wanted, it'd be faster for me to write them for Y. Did they still want X? They didn't.

Another time I was prepared to build a robust, modular system with its own interface for everyone on the team to use. I mean, really put in the hours and design the hell out of that thing. And somebody said "Hey, can't you just do X?"

Sure, it'd take me five minutes. But you wouldn't get features A through F--you don't want any of those? They didn't.

I just did X.