[adamddev1]

I really like that tagline, "How to avoid programming yourself into a corner." Sometimes I've made stuff that I've hacked and hacked together until it barely works and it feels like you're just straining harder and harder to get it workable and then there's this sinking feeling of, "oh dear, I can never touch or change this or everything will crumble into an irreparable mess." Learning the SICP/HTDP way of creating a "language" to handle your problem with changed everything for me. It helps you to clearly lay out and work with the particular kinds of operations that your problem (and its variations) require. As Hal Abelson explains in this podcast: [1]

> So you really take the attitude that, boy if I’m writing something complex, I need to think about what I’m doing as if I’m writing a language. Or just say that a little less onerously. When I think about the operations I want to produce in any kind of program I’m writing, I don’t want to think about only that particular problem I’m doing right then. I want to carve out a space that’s broad enough that I could be doing that particular problem and lots of variations and lots of similar ones.

[1]: https://corecursive.com/039-hal-abelson-sicp

[deltaonefour]

Agreed. That tagline is what entire corporations do. They program their entire ecosystem into a corner and it demands an entire rewrite or refactor.