Importance of data modeling

It's obviously important to do some amount of data modeling. What's not so obvious is when to stop. It's like commenting your code: newer programmers just don't know when to quit. When you're a little insecure, adding comments and metadata are a great security-blanket that make you feel busy when you've in fact stopped making forward progress and are just reiterating (or perhaps teaching yourself) what's already been accomplished.

-- Steve Yegge