There are circumstances when one has to "get things done" quickly. It's sad, but it's life.

How much pragmatism is still okay and how much could kill the project in a long term?

I believe, some degree of pragmatism on the lower level of code is just fine. I'm talking about one line of code more or less, one nanosecond more or less, let or const, things like that.

On the other hand, using shortcuts in design is not just pragmatic, it's simply wrong. It creates technical debt that will grow exponentially, hard to fix in the future.

The point is, design (architecture) has an overall impact, while implementation is quite isolated.

Recently, I had a discussion with a software architect, who described himself as pragmatic. As that, he believes the opposite: compromises in design can save a lot of effort, but code must be as clean and efficient as possible.

What are your thoughts?