Parallel Implementations
What I try to do nowadays is to implement new ideas in parallel with the old ones, rather than mutating the existing code. This allows easy and honest comparison between them, and makes it trivial to go back to the old reliable path when the spiffy new one starts showing flaws. The difference between changing a console variable to get a different behavior versus running an old exe, let alone reverting code changes and rebuilding, is significant.
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John Carmack shares his approach to exploratory programming.
