[mikewarot]

When solving a problem with a computer, there are any number of ways to do it, and it's not clear until later if any given approach has a "gotcha" that works strongly against it until after the fact. Over time, you're throwing more and more computer time, and programmer time, into feeding those gotchas.

So, you go back and dig out those gotchas, and try something else, it takes some time to understand what went wrong, and how to make it better without creating new and even hungrier gotchas. This process is called refactoring, and in the end it saves far more time and effort than it takes, but it requires concentration and time to do a good job, so please respect the closed office door, or other flag that I can't be interrupted right now when I'm refactoring.