The Role of Models in Software Development

It makes for an interesting reading: Programming with Models - Modeling with Code. I can relate to this article as I tend to design software by defining the rough interfaces of the main components and refine them as I go along. I know it's not the way we are taught at school but I find this approach very natural. Mind you, I usually work on small-to-medium size designs so I can't tell whether it is adequate to large scale projects. With nowadays IDEs, refactoring is not as costly as it used to be, therefore it is fairly easy to change your mind in the course of the project without adding too much overhead. The design grows organically over time and I am often surprised with the end result because I didn't envisioned the system that way. Anyways, what I'm trying to say here is that this design style really suits my personality. But, I'm in no way implying that it's the best approach.