Seeing the future? Picking the right macro strategy, programming language, database, etc ahead of time, sure, an experienced developer can usually do that. But correctly predicting the boundaries of systems, libraries, APIs—and guessing who will maintain which system and figuring out dependencies—that never goes according to plan. So in my experience YAGNI and reducing coupling are more important principles than sharing code.
If I'm writing an API to move a robot, my problem space is fairly bounded, and I know that someday I will want force control at some end effector. I know that there's a 6 axis robot I've been eyeing, etc.
