Software development topics I've changed my mind on

> Most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written

Nah.

I (16+ years developer) prefer to iteratively go between coding and designing. It happens way too often that when you're coding, you stumble across something that makes you go "oh f me, that would NEVER work", which forces you to approach a problem entirely differently.

Quite often you also have eureka moments with better solutions that just would not have happened unless you had code in front of you, which again makes you approach the problem entirely differently.

Iterative work is THE way to work in large legacy codebases. The minute you wade into the code, all of your planning is moot. You don't know what's lurking below the surface. No one knows what's lurking under the surface. Except maybe Dave, because he vaguely remembers about 15 years back talking to some guy who wrote some code 30 years back about it.

Greenfield, absolutely design up front you lucky devils, but iterative is the way otherwise.