number one worry should be getting paid
(Edited)
For one thing, that doesn't sound like something that's actionable for Silas in the context of his request for advice, compared to advising him to learn some specific techniques, such as MVC, which make for more maintainable code.
For another, your worry should be "getting paid" after you have reached a reasonable level of proficiency. A medical student's first concern isn't getting paid, it's learning how not to harm patients. Similarly if you're learning programming, as opposed to confident enough of your chops to go on the market, you have a responsibility to learn how not to harm future owners of your code through negligent design practices. That a majority of programmers today fail to fulfill that basic responsibility doesn't absolve you of it.
Programming is different from medicine. All the good programmers I know have learned their craft on the job. Silas doesn't have to wait and learn without getting paid, his current skill level is already in demand.
But that's tangential. More importantly, whenever I hear the word "maintainability" I feel like "uh oh, they wanna sell me some doctrinaire bullshit". Maintainability is one of those things everyone has a different idea of. In my opinion you should just try to solve each problem in the most natural manner, and maintainability w...
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