Best Practices while Prototyping?

Question

While prototyping, to what extent do you throw best practices out of the door in favor of code-and-fix hacking? Granted that the code is not intended to be kept in full production.

Add: I am working on a rather large semi-working prototype made in Python, to figure out the UI for an embedded application. I know that the code is not intended to be used in production, but still it annoys me that the quality of the code base declines steadily with the number of changes done.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I have had too many prototypes turn into the baseline product due to time constraints. So ideally, you'll follow best practices. Realistically, you do what it takes to get the job done in order to meet whatever deadline you are shooting for. Don't expect the opportunity to completely rewrite. What you come up with will frequently be the baseline, especially if it took more than a few days to develop. The best advice is to learn to use best practices at hacker level speeds.

Answer 2

It depends upon what your prototype is trying to prove. Are you prototyping the UI for usability and to demonstrate to clients or are you prototyping an architecture?

If I'm prototyping a UI then I'll throw away everything once the concept has been through iterations and proven.

If I'm prototyping an architecture then the final code will conform to best practices and be usable.

That said, it's amazing the amount of hack job prototypes that end up in full production due to time or budget constraints. If your intention is for the code to not end up in production (ie a UI prototype) then it can be useful to mock up screenshots rather than code them.