The reusability fallacy - Part 1

reuse

Reuse means the use of a piece of technology for new purposes, often ones that were never envisioned by the original designers. Reusability refers to design that makes reuse possible.

Self-guaranteeing promises

A self-guaranteeing promise is verifiable and non-reversible. It does not require you to trust anyone.

A protocol for structured robustness reproductions and replicability assessments

Abstract. Robustness reproductions and replicability discussions are on the rise in response to concerns about a potential credibility crisis in economics.

Architectural mismatch: why reuse is so hard

Why isn't there more progress toward building systems from existing parts? One answer is that the assumptions of the parts about their intended environment are implicit and either don't match the actual environment or conflict with those of other parts. The authors explore these problems in the context of their own experience with a compositional approach.<>

Mental accounting of product returns

Abstract Product returns incur a substantial financial loss for retailers. We demonstrate how, when, and why cross‐selling during the product returns process can reduce this loss in revenue. We find consumers more readily spend money refunded from product returns than unspent money. We theorize that this refund effect occurs because consumers psychologically realize the loss of money when purchasing products and earmark that money for spending. Thus, consumers feel a smaller psychological loss when spending refunded money than unspent money on a subsequent purchase. In six experiments, we find consumers spend refunded money more freely than unspent money, even more than windfall gains like lottery winnings, on products in similar and different product categories (e.g., groceries vs. apparel). However, the refund effect only holds when consumers do not expect to return products at the point of purchase and before refunded money is commingled with money in other accounts. Our findings identify a new fungibility violation due to mental accounting (i.e., a new source effect), and illustrate its value for generating, validating, and explaining revenue retention strategies.

The Paradox of Reuse in 2026: A Case of Quasi-Enclosure, or "Subsidized Club Goods that Sort of Look Like Public Goods"

How we can understand, and react to, the complicated impacts of AI systems on online communities and knowledge commons

The Paradox of Reuse in 2026: A Case of Quasi-Enclosure, or "Subsidized Club Goods that Sort of Look Like Public Goods"

How we can understand, and react to, the complicated impacts of AI systems on online communities and knowledge commons

The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols | Summer of Protocols

DRAFT Version 0.99, March 6th, 2023

Keynote: Reproducibility and replicability of computer simulations | Canal U

Since the early days of the reproducibility crisis, much progress has been made in understanding and improving computational reproducibility and replicability (R and R)...

The Paradox of Perfection: When ‘Good Enough’ is Actually Better

Exploring the tension between engineering perfectionism and pragmatic delivery. Discover why striving for the perfect solution often prevents us from shipping valuable improvements and how to find the balance.

Double Crux — A Strategy for Resolving Disagreement

(Cross posted to LessWrong)

Enjoy it again: Repeat experiences are less repetitive than people think.

Common Sense Refactoring of a Messy React Component | Alex Kondov

One thing I've learned from all the consulting I've done is that rewrites rarely lead to anything good. Almost in all cases, when you have an application runnin

Dependency cooldowns turn you into a free-rider

Against dependency cooldowns as a response to supply chain attacks

The Big Rewrite, revisited

Of the many axioms in the world of software, few rise to the occasion of Thou Shall Not Rewrite Your Application. Spolsky called it the “single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make” in his seminal 2000 essay Things You Should Never Do. The Big Rewrite has been likened to al…