In my experience, hacking things is only faster because you rarely try to do things the right way and are more familiar with hacking your way out of problems than you are planning for them. Hacking should be a last resort, when timelines are up and it is down to that or shipping nothing.
Agreed, it feels like I am reading arabic mixed in with english. Code flows top to bottom, left to right and suddenly there is this one piece that is right to left.
