Make It Work First Before Optimizing

Users don't care how elegant your code is. They care if it solves their problem.

I once worked on a project where we spent days optimizing our database queries. We shaved milliseconds off response times. Our code was a thing of beauty. There was just one tiny problem: The core feature didn’t actually work.

Oops.

We’d gotten so caught up in making things fast that we forgot to make sure they worked in the first place. It’s a classic rookie mistake, but I’ve seen senior devs fall into this trap too.

So let’s talk about why you should focus on making your code work before worrying about making it fast.