[hinkley]

We associate things and people with the experiences where we encountered them.

Once I made the same observation that GP did, I reflected back on conflicts over code. The most vitriolic arguments I’ve gotten into about design decisions at work have all, almost to a man, boiled down to the person who authored it having done so in flow state and how fucking dare you question the beauty of the output of that effort. They make it personal because the experience was deeply personal.

Flow state cannot make nuanced ethical decisions. It’s right in the characteristics. And both DevEx and maintainability come down to thinking about the people who have to deal with your code for the next four years.

The only way I’ve been able to avoid this trap myself is to spent more effort on refactoring, taking notes, taking breaks, and saving up the Deep Work for special occasions where I have choreographed much of it ahead of time. So I know exactly what to do and why. Exploratory dev in flow state leads to all of these sins. Because you get the bear to dance and then you stop.