It's an easy trap to fall into. Refactoring something that works into a more elegant abstraction is intellectually satisfying work. One need not worry about ill

It's an easy trap to fall into. Refactoring something that works into a more elegant abstraction is intellectually satisfying work. One need not worry about ill-defined external requirements and is limited only by one's own creativity and capability. Adding value beneficial and perceptible to a user often requires frustrating interaction with people or organizations who don't even know what they want, much less how to communicate it in a form a programmer can work with. Often there are ugly and non-obvious special cases to be dealt with. Left to their preferences, many programmers will retreat into abstraction building instead of doing the hard work of working with users to add value or dealing with the ugly special cases, rationalizing it as the best use of their time.