So I find "perfectionism" lately hindering me in my game dev endeavors. Sometimes, I often spend too much time reworking a working solution if feel it is inadequate or if I'm aware of a better way to do it. I get carried away trying to learn the "best" way to do something instead of rolling with the punches and learning as I go along (which is probably a better approach). I also get carried away with language specific detail (is this implemented in the most "pythonic" way, for example). Basically, it boils down to a fear of doing things the "wrong" way. Is there any advice you would give to get over this mindset when it comes to developing a game? I only ask because I find my current approach a hinderance to me actually finishing a project. Thanks!

Give yourself permission to be you. Get over it. There was probably a time when I was where you are at. But there is no "right" way to code. I spent a lot of years trying to learn the "right" way to code games and such. It doesn't exist. There is only this way or that way. Sometimes there's a more efficient way (which should be appreciated). But at the end of the day the people who play your game couldn't care less how you coded it. All they care about is whether it is fun or not including whether it crashes or otherwise acts buggy (low frame rate for example). How you code it is only valuable when it serves those goals or makes it easy to debug (or for other people to read if other people are working on your project). Sounds like you already know your answer. But at the end of the day, you have to be you and if that's the way you code, then that's the way you code. Being concerned about finding "the best way" just means you're a good programmer, but you already know you need to let that go sometimes in order to get things done. So listen to yourself.

Set yourself realistic goals for each day you're working on the project. Write a little todo list. Whenever you finish a point on the list: strike it out. This an important aspect because it boosts the feeling that you actually achieved something (therefore I recommend to do the daily todo list on a paper or whiteboard).

In the beginning you'll probably notice that you tend to put too much stuff on the list. Maybe you'll not even finish a single point in a satisfying way if you over engineer or rework too much. Don't worry, that's part of the process. You'll become better at this because you'll feel good when you strike out something and you'll feel bad if you don't manage to do all the stuff on your list.

Of course it's important that you actually put stuff on your list which helps you to progress.

Stuff like "refactor x", "rework y", "improve z" should only appear on your list if it's absolutely crucial (e.g. if it's a base system and you need to build a lot of stuff on top of it next). In most cases such improvements are not even required. They can be done later when the actual game is "done"/playable as an optimization.

Always keep in mind: Perfect, highly optimized and cleanly engineered code is more or less useless if you never finish the game which uses it.

Its odd but bugs in our own code annoy us much more

Not at all, we strive for high quality results, and we know our code down to the last bit, including all the little corner cases that might arise if you start thinking about it.

This is very much why I can't be bothered to play games where I know the source code in detail, as there is nothing to explore anymore.

My approach to avoid perfectionism is to consider all code temporary. It's not perfect, but it does the job sufficiently currently, so it will do for now. There is other code that needs me more than this code, so let's do that first.

One nice way is to design a interface/API for some underlaying library or tools in such a way that you can optimize the hell out of it... later.

Just make the interface really nice. The backend code can be the most horrible piece of shit as long as at works reasonable enough for now.