I think it's less a middle path than a third option. I see the type of thinking the author is commenting on whenever there is a tight requirement on a feature. Especially when you know you have to add some custom magic to meet the requirement. People tend to psychologically buy into a fully custom solution early on. So they either hack in a custom solution using abnormal data paths or known bad solutions or they fundamentally rearchitect the system around it. The third path is sketching out the feature so that it's modular and can be replaced. That way you can start out with a standard solution which gets you 90% of the way there then replace it as development progresses.