What programming practice that you once liked have you since changed your mind about? [closed]

//Coming out of university, we were taught to ensure we always had an abundance 
//of commenting around our code. But applying that to the real world, made it 
//clear that over-commenting not only has the potential to confuse/complicate 
//things but can make the code hard to follow. Now I spend more time on 
//improving the simplicity and readability of the code and inserting fewer yet 
//relevant comments, instead of spending that time writing overly-descriptive 
//commentaries all throughout the code.

Single return points.

I once preferred a single return point for each method, because with that I could ensure that any cleanup needed by the routine was not overlooked.

Since then, I've moved to much smaller routines - so the likelihood of overlooking cleanup is reduced and in fact the need for cleanup is reduced - and find that early returns reduce the apparent complexity (the nesting level) of the code. Artifacts of the single return point - keeping "result" variables around, keeping flag variables, conditional clauses for not-already-done situations - make the code appear much more complex than it actually is, make it harder to read and maintain. Early exits, and smaller methods, are the way to go.

• Trying to code things perfectly on the first try.
• Trying to create perfect OO model before coding.
• Designing everything for flexibility and future improvements.

In one word overengineering.