“Of course, to be honest, the consequences usually fell on a more junior programmer who had to deal with an irate developer that had something unexpectedly stop working when I tore up the code to make it “better”.”

Ye people like you kinda suck.

Unfortunately, you’re just now learning that maybe the new implementation isn’t “better” but that it’s just...new.

And now it’s slowed down the team too. I know it’s John Carmack, but still it’s not very collaborative nor empathetic towards your coworkers to plow through code like you’re the only one working on it.