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I was an extremist too. Then I realized my products never worked because I was too focused on the code and not in the user.
These days I will always code the dumbest thing that actually works in the hands of users and actually solves their problem.
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That's how I started. All my early projects were messy, but they did exactly what they needed to. It's just matter of making clean projects that do exactly what they need to do. There's no tradeoff.
But moreso than software, it was real physical engineering that taught me the value of quality up front. Anything can be made to work, but only a few things can be made to last.
I flip flop between these extremes. If I'm being paid a salary, i will code "proper". If I am just trying to code something to fix a problem (eg worried about being sensored on meetup.com) then I will do what Vito said and code the dumbest thing to just get something out the door. If it gets adoption or people ask/pay me to I would refactor to something more maintainable and extensible.
