Your code may be elegant, but mine works 12 years ago
After 7+ years of intense coding during my work and often evenings/weekends across many languages, a few months ago I came to the conclusion
"The ability to make those decisions (of where to cut corners), often mid-project, is what separates veterans from rookies."
I don't have the kahonas to call myself a veteran but certainly, I can now relate to this. I shall be keeping this article to forward to colleagues at appropriate times in the future, along with Joel@FogCreek's article on why re-writing software with the same guys, the same skills and a simplistic - albeit optimistic - mindset is suicide for your application/service/software.