Representation

The programmer at wit’s end for lack of space can often do best by disentangling himself from his code, rearing back, and contemplating his data. Representation is the essence of programming. – Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

As years pass with newer projects, the one thing I notice more is that data is more important than algorithms. You can alleviate bad algorithms with better ones during the course of a project, but to fix bad data design, a full rewrite is usually necessary.