I think you’re both right. If you frame the original comment as “don’t write final production code without thorough modeling” it works both ways. If you want to counter with “well our non-final code always goes to production anyway!” You have a cultural problem that needs addressing.

To do that, you need to be willing to delete code you worked hard on. Lots of people aren't good at that.

And some think asking your boss if it's okay is a good idea, (spoilers: they'll say no). That is just a way to pass blame for a decision you can't stomach.

It's a incremental process.

You model a certain experimental ("discovery") thing, then you implement it then you analyses the result then you change the model etc.

And sure in many cases in practice people might not skip the modeling but don't properly write it down in any later one usable way. Especially during initial experimental discovery phases. Which isn't good. But understandable and can be fully ok. Honestly especially for boring simple web API's this is pretty common. It's just important to know when to stop ;=)

This is a fair argument for taking a stab in the dark. That's certainly how we started out.