Write, delete, write, delete, write

I know nobody writes code by hand anymore, but BEAR with me. Everybody in software engineering knows the DRY1 principle. We've also come to terms with DRY being harmful when YAGNI2. As long as there's a SSOT3, there should be three instances of duplication before you attempt a refactor. These are all good ideas worthy of their ubiquity. However, implementing them effectively requires future sight: a sense of when YAGNI, understanding the flow of data so you can ensure SSOT, and - of course - having a solution which meets your requirements. What if I told you I had cracked time travel? That would be lying. However, there are many future universes tucked away in my git reflog. You see, ever since I started programming, I built up a habit of implementing the exact same thing multiple times. There is a graveyard of 200 perfectly good OpenGL sprite batching implementations. For every REST API endpoint that I implemented at PostGrid, there are 4 versions of it that never saw the light of…