Good programming practices versus speed of ad-hoc programming
<p>I know good programming practices always help in the "long run" for a project, but sometimes they just seem to cost a lot of time. For instance, its suggested that I maintain a header file and a cpp file for each class that I make, keep only the declarations in the headers while definitions in cpp. Even with 10-12 classes, this process becomes very cumbersome. Updating the makefile each time a new class is added dependecies and evthing .. takes a lot of time... </p>

<p>While I am busy doing all this, others would just write evthing in a single fie, issue a single compile command and run their programs ... why should I also not do the same? Its fast and it works?</p>

<p>Even trying to come up with short, meaningful names for variables and functions takes a lot of time, otherwise you end up typing 30 character long names, completely unmanagable without auto complete</p>

<p>Edit :</p>

<p>Okay let me put it a little differently : Lets say i am working on a  small-medium size project, that is never going to require any maintenance by a different developer (or even me). Its basically a one time development. Are programming practices worth following in such a case. I guess my question is, do the good programming practices actually help during the development, or they just pay off during maintenance ?</p>
