If your task is to keep things tidy, but can't enforce the use of a tidy practices, you're a janitor.

Advice is never universal. Context matters.

Nobody stays at a job for ever. Be prepared for your colleages to leave.

Software development is, in some sense, all about efficiency. Except when computers are used for entertainment (gaming, for example), pretty much their entire reason for existence is to make certain tasks more efficient. When we write software, we’re generally doing so with the purpose of automating, or simplifying some task that in some way, a human, or other less-efficient machine might be doing. Certain types of developers dedicate large parts of their careers to making the development of software more efficient.

Fellow reader Anita Kalmane asked: “What’s your opinion on having a separate team who is fixing bugs?” I want to share my response, slightly edited for brevity: I think it’s a terrible idea, except maybe as a VERY short term measure in an emergency. The three biggest reasons: It teaches the team producing bugs that “bug fixing is someone else’s problem.” It has the bugfix team working without proper context. Usually companies that do this put the “least skilled” (however they determine that) people on the maintenence/bugfix team.

Don't take resistence to your great ideas personally. It could mean that you're onto something.