[dahart]

> your parable has another side that no one sees - the guy learned a lot of different things in the process

No one sees?! What do you mean? That’s literally the punch line of the joke.

Of course ‘learning things’ is a secondary benefit, especially if that’s actually one of the goals you specifically set out for. Still I’ve personally watched programmers live that joke, and overengineer something that could take a day into a year long project, to solve a problem they didn’t have. I’ve seen it enough and cause enough problems that I try hard to write code with specificity and stick to the problem at hand. So much so that I have an actual problem with not abstracting things soon enough. ;)

[dmitripopov]

Well, I just thought you are giving a negative connotation to it while I think there's nothing wrong if the thing is your hobby :)