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.

Most programming is actually figuring out what already exists and what (and more importantly: why) the requirements are. This is best done long before a single line of code is written.

I think the author is taking a wider view of "programming" than the actual writing of code as the end product. Some of the most important work I've done is spend the time to argue that something doesn't need to be done at all.

And how do you figure out what the requirements are? In my 10+ professional years, I have never gotten requirements by asking for them. Almost always I had to show my interpretation of what I think the requirements are, and use the feedback I got to define the actual requirements. The quickest way to get there is by iterating.

You don't ask for the requirements. You ask what they're trying to do, or what problem they're trying to solve. Sometimes I have to ask "where is this data going" or "what do you expect the end result of this to be".