When you should not care about your code being "proper"

• If you manage to answer the business goal, and keep it over time with low overhead. (users don't view source before they pay you)
• MVP / POC - If writing proper code means wasting time one a concept before you how to make money from it (if you spend years and 45 million dollars writing your app and end up closing shop because it had no market, no one cares how proper was the code)
• When having a life threatening situation (e.g. iron man prototype 1 was a dirty hack, but it got him out of the cave right?)
• or if you simply don't know how to write proper code (if somene manages to make a living writing non proper code, in today's unemployment, I say, better write bad code than be homeless)
• if you simply know what your'e doing or think you can get away with it pretending you do

When to write proper code

• If it will have a significant business impact, e.g. performance will impact the revenue, or prevent sales
• If it's so not proper that maintaining the code becomes a business issue (high maintenance costs)
• If you are a known programmer working on a big open source project
• Same for a big company contributing an in-house library to the world
• If you want to show your work as a portfolio in future interviews

When you should not care about your code being "proper"

• If you manage to answer the business goal, and keep it over time with low overhead. (users don't view source before they pay you)
• MVP / POC - If writing proper code means wasting time on a concept before you know how to make money from it (if you spend years and 45 million dollars writing your app and end up closing shop because it had no market, no one cares how proper was the code)
• When having a life threatening situation (e.g. iron man prototype 1 was a dirty hack, but it got him out of the cave right?)
• or if you simply don't know how to write proper code (if somene manages to make a living writing non proper code, in today's unemployment, I say, better write bad code than be homeless)
• if you simply know what your'e doing or think you can get away with it pretending you do

When to write proper code

• If it will have a significant business impact, e.g. performance will impact the revenue, or prevent sales
• If it's so not proper that maintaining the code becomes a business issue (high maintenance costs)
• If you are a known programmer working on a big open source project
• Same for a big company contributing an in-house library to the world
• If you want to show your work as a portfolio in future interviews