In contrast I put my laptop to sleep at the end of the day, and the next morning I wake it up and have whatever I was in the middle of already open. Often inclu

In contrast I put my laptop to sleep at the end of the day, and the next morning I wake it up and have whatever I was in the middle of already open. Often including what I was in the middle of a week ago when something with a higher priority came up. And the lower-priority tasks I'm playing with whenever my main task gets too monotonous. But the actual code I'm working on? That stays (relatively) clean. Professionals realize that “quick and dirty” is an oxymoron. Dirty always means slow! This depends on what timescale you're considering. If the way that was less work in the long run was always also less work in the short run, technical debt would not exist. The cleanliness of a workspace is invariably reflected by the product made in it. This is why your autobuilder should be set to make a clean checkout every time. It gets rid of any mess, so you know exactly what the inputs were that got you your output. How would you feel eating food from a filthy kitchen? How can clean code come from a dirty desktop? Because your 20 open browser tabs are isolated from your email which is isolated from your IDE. Food is a physical item which can pick up contaminants from physical surfaces it comes in contact with. The code in your IDE is not a physical item and does not come in contact with your browser tabs. The analogy doesn't work.