Nobel prize–winner and game theory pioneer Reinhard Selten observed that people work diligently to be rational ex post. That is, we commonly look back at how a situation played out to try and understand how a better outcome might have been achieved. This contrasts with a game theory approach in which the goal is to develop a strategy that will lead to that better outcome a priori.

Why Programmers Want to Start Over

Have you ever felt the urge to scrap your code and rewrite it from scratch? If so, you’re not alone. Many programmers have this temptation, and there’s a hidden reason behind it. The reason is not that the old code is bad, but that it’s hard to understand. There’s a fundamental principle of programming that explains this: Reading code is harder than writing it. This is why reusing code is so challenging. This is why every developer on your team has their own favourite way of splitting strings into arrays. They create their own function because it’s more enjoyable and simpler than learning how the existing one works.