Being Willing to Discard

There are many unanticipated factors that sneak up on us when starting out on a new project. Once these issues reveal themselves, we can either continue struggling through them or rewrite code based on our new knowledge. I believe that being willing to throw work away and start over is essential in improving what we have. In this mindset, a programmer is less attached to what they write, and can quickly produce basic prototypes rather than focusing on details too soon; they don't try to perfect anything before anyone else sees it, allowing them to find more important issues early. In an open source environment, coders are passionate about their projects; that's how the community survives. Many of them are also willing to completely redo or remove their contributions to improve the project as a whole. This allows the software to improve rapidly.