I've been working as a freelance web and app developer for a couple of years now (not long I know), and I've just been given my first large project.

Needless to say it didn't go very smoothly, so I sought advice from another programmer about how to approach a large project.

He said that I had drastically been over thinking the task at hand, and that because I had never tackled a large project like this I'd been spending too much time over thinking design patterns. In his wise words, he told me "F*ck the future, build for now".

Is this a trend programmers typically follow when going about a project like this? For example, if you were asked to do a proof of concept model, is it a typical trend just to mash a workable example out as soon as possible?