Hmmm, my take on this is totally different from yours. When I hear "Stupid Emotional Programmer Attachment" I think of cases where I have been too proud of a particular chunk of code to see that the problem could be solved in a much simpler way. If you look for it, you will see hundreds of examples of this all around you -- situations where people were too proud of their homegrown HTML parser to use a CPAN module, too proud of their custom data persistence system to use a relational database, too proud of their XML skills to use a key=value config file. It's not a positive thing. To be a really effective programmer, you have to be able to shut down your ego now and then and accept that the coolest approach may not be the best way to get things done.