[a1o]

> Write everything twice

There's an enhancement in a software I use/maintain that I wrote once and lost (the PC I wrote kaput and I was writing offline so I also didn't backup). It was an entire weekend of coding that I got very in the zone and happily coded.

After I lost that piece of code I never could get the will to write that code again. Whenever I try to start that specific enhancement I get distracted and can't focus because I also can't remember the approach I took to get that working and get lazy to figure it out again how that was done. It's been two years now.

[mgaunard]

That's a good point. Particularly good pieces of work are hard to rewrite.

I remember rewriting some piece of infrastructure once when I moved to another job, but I failed to summon the energy to rewrite it a second time at another job.

[AlotOfReading]

Every time I've pushed through that feeling and rewritten it anyway, the end result was better than the original. The memories eventually come back once I get into the problem and hindsight makes clear how much stuff past-me missed.

[HappMacDonald]

Especially in cases where its a project that got derailed or interrupted and I have to start over, the biggest problem for me is inability to concentrate the second time largely from overwhelming and vertiginous deja vu.

Namely, at any given moment my memories of doing the same thing before interfere with my current reality of trying to do it again like intrusive thought microphone feedback.