Here’s an excerpt from the excellent Code Complete

Suppose you need a report that shows your annual profit. You already have computerized reports that show quarterly profits. If you’re locked into the programmer mindset, you’ll reason that adding an annual report to a system that already does quarterly reports should be easy. Then you’ll pay a programmer to write and debug a time-consuming progrm that calculates annual profits. If you’re not locked into the programmer mindset, you’ll pay your secretary to create the annual figures by taking one minute to add up the quarterly figures on a pocket calculator.

The most valuable people in your organization are probably the ones that can see and avoid that trap.

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