Write code that you need now

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

Yogi Berra

This aforism tells us that we should write the code for what we need now. If we write a web site with internationalization support we are betting that we will need a web site to support more than one language, but if we want to develop a site only in English we are wasting time. If is possible to add features later. This does not means that we should write software with tightly-coupled objects and with an inflexible design, but we should find a trade-off between pragmatism and flexibility.

If you are interested in this topic, read pace 14 of "Design Patterns in Ruby" by Russ Olsen.