You point out that a bad programmer can cause lots of unnecessary work. That's relevant, but importantly, that destructive force is even more true when it comes to politics. Now, in both disciplines it is obvious that you need to design well (code and laws). But only in programming it is really obvious that you need to refactor all the time. A coder is himself hurt when the code deteriorates or lose simplicity and structure. A politician is likely insulated quite a bit. Laws are typically too complex, too intrusive, too buggy and non-coherent. Politicians commit pork-barrel nonsense together with important structural changes. Laws need to be constantly refactored and simplified to cause as little unnecessary work as possible among "customers", i.e. citizens and corporations, and also among architects such as lawmakers and laywers. AND it's important that laws are simple and coherent for citizens to be able to understand them and exercise their political rights. This I would like politicians to learn from coding. The power and necessity of refactoring!