Scratching an itch is easy; keep scratching after the itch is over is hard
When I wrote MMM, I had a problem: my music collection was badly organized (in a file system point of view) and I thought it would be easy to fix using a tool to do all the fixing automagically. I had all the tools needed to solve my problem and knew how to use them, so there I go. In about one hour I had a tool that solved my problem without adding new ones. But the problem is that I think software should do The Right Thing ™ always, so my plans included support for Ogg files, even if my current music collection didn’t have one.
And, with my problem solved, I don’t have any motivation to keep it going and add ogg support. And now solving the problem isn’t funny anymore; it is going to feel more like a pain doing that than having that warm, funny feeling inside.
Even worst: after writing software for so long, I know that Doing The Right Thing ™ really pays off. I don’t believe that “worst is better” (maybe on Bizarro’s world) and I’ve proved it to myself, changing everything that I thought was wrong in the project at work to the right thing and giving myself some pats in the back after finish my work before everyone else. So I think that doing the right thing for MMM will pay off later but, right now, it is just annoying the hell of me.
