TITLE: The Willingness to Delete Working Code
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 28, 2013  2:57 PM
DESC: 
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... and to do code katas, too:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 I find I'm more ready to discard pages than I used to be.
 I used to look for things to keep.  I used to find ways
 to save a paragraph or a sentence, maybe by relocating it.
 Now I look for ways to discard things.  If I discard a
 sentence I like, it's almost as satisfying as keeping a
 sentence I like.  I don't think I've become ruthless or
 perverse--just a bit more willing to believe that nature
 will restore itself.  The instinct to discard is finally
 a kind of faith.  It tells me there's a better way to do
 this page even though the evidence is not accessible at
 the present time.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Says Don DeLillo, in
<A HREF="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/the-art-of-fiction-no-135-don-delillo">
   The Art of Fiction No. 135</A>.
Even in programming, the willingness to cut a chunk of working
code, or to <TT>rm -f</TT> a file, generally follows from a
deep-seated belief that nature will restore itself.  We are
often happy to find that nature does a better job the second
time around.

~~~

PHOTO: Adapted from
<A HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thousandrobots/5371974016/">
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/thousandrobots/5371974016/</A>,
(CC BY-SA 2.0).
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