No standards to follow
Here’s a quote from the EPCOT film that lingered in my consciousness:
Today Disneyland has established standards of performance unsurpassed in all the world. Yet in the planning and building there were no standards to follow; whatever worked became the code. Whatever failed to meet the public need was changed, replaced by a better idea.
This must have been true for the animated films as well: there were no standards to follow; they had to invent things along the way. Why is it so hard to use this mindset in software development? Because after all, there still are no standards. There are no recipes that are guaranteed to work in all situations. Acting as if there is will inevitably lead to problems.