This is true, but it's not the tradeoff most people think. It's not "this way is better but takes more time", it's "spend time now vs. spend time later."
In my experience, you will always spend the time. Spending it earlier can be difficult when you're on a tight schedule which is driving the process, but you'll always spend at least as much time later.
You only spend the time later if you're still working on that project later. It could have failed, done it's job, or you could have moved on to the next project leaving some other poor schmuck to spend the time later.
> In my experience, you will always spend the time.
not in mine, but I've seen a fair amount of very one-off, time-limited projects (the shortest being a client calling a morning for a very simple customized video playback app needed for that very evening, and a lot of it being only needed for a few months)
True, that’s an exception. It reminds me of the way some missile control software never bothers to free memory because by the time it runs out of RAM it’s already exploded…
This is true, but it's not the tradeoff most people think. It's not "this way is better but takes more time", it's "spend time now vs. spend time later."
In my experience, you will always spend the time. Spending it earlier can be difficult when you're on a tight schedule which is driving the process, but you'll always spend at least as much time later.