Brandon Savage has a new post about something that some developers out there factor into their development estimates from the beginning and others are just learning how to adjust to - the sunk cost that can be associated with writing code.

Last week, I began working on something that didn’t pan out. For whatever reason, I went down the wrong path, and ultimately abandoned the task I was working on. In discussing it with my boss, he mentioned to me that it was better to realize early on that something wouldn’t work than to trudge onward, insisting that it be finished due to the "sunk cost" of the time already spent.

There's two sides to this story - one in which the application continues to be developed and takes up more time (but still ends up as a product) and the other where the time already spent is lost as a completely new approach is taken.