[loup-vaillant]

There's even worse than abstractions that are used by their creator only: those that are not used by their creators at all.

I see that in my code all the time: my abstractions tend to suck until I use them myself, at which point I fix them.

The problem is, we often have to build abstractions that others will use before we use them ourselves. At that point we're kinda stuck, because the necessary changes will break code, and that's scary.