The Shape at the Bottom of All Things

I've been teaching a fair amount, which means I've been revisiting my
'class problems' regularly. When I chose the problems, I thought that I
understood them completely (hubris, I know) but now that I've worked them
repeatedly I'm seeing new and surprising things.

These new things have to do with the shape of code. Code can be written,
or shaped, in many ways, and I've always believed that for any given
problem many different code shapes gave equally 'good' solutions. (I think
of programming as an art and am willing to give artists a fair amount of
expressive leeway.)

But I'm having a change of heart.