I know what I was thinking most of the time: I want to get this thing working and out there as quickly as possible.
Deadlines are probably the root cause of most of the world's most horrific hacks.
Also, I've never once had a boss turn to me and say "you know what, forget about writing any new features for now - just refactor the code that is working just fine but looks horrible."
>Deadlines are probably the root cause of most of the world's most horrific hacks.
I definitely agree with this. I've written some absolutely terrible code in marathon sessions with an impending deadline -- in the worst case, I copy-pasted code in six or seven locations for something that could have and definitely should have been factored out into a function. I just didn't have any time to spare, I had to finish it for a demo in X hours. That whole project was a mess.
Deadlines are probably the root cause of most of the world's most horrific hacks.
Also, I've never once had a boss turn to me and say "you know what, forget about writing any new features for now - just refactor the code that is working just fine but looks horrible."