In The Righteous Mind, in a small section, Jonathan Haidt talks about this with the analogy that reason is a mahout riding the elephant of emotion. After readin

In The Righteous Mind, in a small section, Jonathan Haidt talks about this with the analogy that reason is a mahout riding the elephant of emotion. After reading that book and some others, I wondered if I could train my feelings so I’d respond instinctually and instantly to things in the ‘right’ way. Often when we see code, we have a feeling of ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’. An internal reaction that pushes us in some direction. It’s worth questioning why we think that about some things, but I think we eventually develop a sense of what is a good pattern and what isn’t and we actually use the emotional reasoning of our brain to guide us effectively in writing code. Perhaps we wouldn’t even be effective programmers if we had to actually think through full reason each time. Less applicable when reviewing code, of course.