Why Starting to Code Before Defining Behaviour Costs Teams More Later

A widely discussed software development article argues that beginning implementation before a feature's behaviour is fully defined creates an illusion of progress while embedding unresolved decisions into code. Visible outputs like commits, endpoints, and passing tests can mask the fact that critical questions — around idempotency, failure handling, event ordering, and state ownership — remain unanswered. Two engineers working from the same underspecified ticket can each write correct code yet produce incompatible systems, since each independently fills in missing product decisions. The article contends that teams need not a lengthy specification, but a shared baseline covering behaviour, constraints, integration contracts, and acceptance criteria before writing a line of code. Skipping this alignment does not save time; it converts planning gaps into costly redesigns discovered only after development is complete.