Just to check this with you all...
I don't see the problem with design taking the soul out of a program. IF it does, it means that once stage one is left, noone ever dares to go back to it. Not because design takes the soul out in itself.
Design establishes a timeline, that timeline is usualy changed to the deadline. That leaves no room for redesign.
The guy starting over after 3 years into the project probably had a real sollid design, only found out that it lacked to bring what he had in mind, and thus, went back to the drawing board to re-design.
Offcourse it would be dumb to design a program that stores the number of times you hit the 'enter' key on a give day... but if you where going to record the keypresses / user / day and probably want an analisys of it you will have to plan it to get it right the first time. Besides, noone said you can't prototype during design, to get comfertable with it.
After that, I personaly take great pride in being able to forsee the problems, and always seem to have missed a few to break my head anyways
Does this word what we are all saying more or less ? (checking since I used to get crap software, till I started planning in a way that works for me (not even following standards yet))