... poorly understood - and sloppily formulated - ideas This is my favorite part of programming :) You have an idea and attempt to codify it. During the proces

... poorly understood - and sloppily formulated - ideas This is my favorite part of programming :) You have an idea and attempt to codify it. During the process, your code starts to get uglier and uglier. Refactoring the code leads you to re-examine your conceptualization of the problem, leading to new insights outside the domain of programming. If your code does not lend well to abstraction, it's a good indicator that perhaps your idea has missed the mark. See the structure of the code, compare it to the structure of the idea and you have a whole new platform for creativity. Think. Write. Refactor. Rinse and repeat. Turning bad ideas into good ideas. Perhaps the reason why so many successful startups are famous for inventions resulting from other than their original ideas.