The Rule of Three
At first I thought this might have been a repost of some refactoring advice I heard of long ago. A quick google finds a reference on wikipedia [0]. Essentially it goes like this:<p><pre><code>    The first time you implement something, just do it.

    The second time you implement the same thing, copy it.

    The third time, refactor.
</code></pre>
The OP seems like an interesting variation on the same theme.<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(computer_programming)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(computer_program...</a>