I hadn't thought of programming this way but it rings true. Call it the "genius complex" or "hacker complex": wanting to create something great alone and in a short timeframe then "unveil" it and bask in praise from peers. Unfortunately for self-approved geniuses and hackers, great things are built incrementally.
"The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun has something to say along these lines but in general terms rather than in terms of programming. Check it out:
I agree that projects are best developed and released incrementally, but I don't see that as being the same as releasing unfinished code, or code which otherwise doesn't meet the developer's own expectations of fitness.
I read the article, and he makes good points, but he was also concentrating on a specific subset of software development, and I don't think the principles apply equally well to individual projects or projects developed by small teams.
Also, it glosses over the reasons that we all developed those habits in the first place: the software development community is notoriously acerbic. Although most of the time nobody may care about your unfinished code, eventually you'll post something, somewhere, that will elicit an ugly response that could have been avoided if you'd just rolled out something a little more polished. (See also: the OpenBSD development community.)
"The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun has something to say along these lines but in general terms rather than in terms of programming. Check it out:
http://www.amazon.com/Myths-Innovation-Scott-Berkun/dp/05965...