I was always annoyed at my parents for telling to wear a jacket (rain coat, hat, etc) just in case. When it got cold, and I shivered, I never credited my parents with foresight. Now, I find myself contantly reminding my kids to bring a jacket "just in case".

A lot of the things in the book are ways that are differrent than you might choose (or stumble into), but don't always take longer. If you get in the habit of doing things "the right way", you won't be any slower, and if the unexpected happens, you'll be far ahead.

In the example of "when to sub", the second use of the code it's faster to cut-n-paste then make a seperate sub and call from two places. But as soon as you need to make a change, or you have a third use for the code, you're already in the hole.

I had a colleague once who defended his lack of subs because when you make a new sub you have to name it, and he suffered from "writer's block". Oh well.