I can understand what dllthomas is talking about. I'd never write a full-blown prototype, but whenever I'm writing a non-trivial app for myself it can be quite productive to write 10% of the app, throw that away, and start again. This strategy always gives me a better understanding of the problem, the app's architecture and so on, as well as a ton of new ideas.

Right, that's pretty much what I was talking about. Not so much something "officially blessed as a prototype" but "does this make sense at all?" experimentation shy of an MVP. I've heard "write it, throw it away, rewrite it" attributed to Knuth, and while that's overstating it a little you definitely learn things in your first attempt.

Fred Brooks, maybe?

> The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. […] Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

But as someone on Ward's Wiki said http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway ,

> The corollary to this is that if you plan to throw one away, you will end up throwing away two.

Yeah, I've seen that one too. Could very well be memetically related (through Knuth or not).