Yesterday I was working on new GPIO guide, and I was doing the wiring, nothing was working and I had tried 7 chips for the experiment, none of them behaved same and none of them behaved anywhere close to what I expected. Then I burnt my finger when touching the chip and I realized that something was very wrong.

The breadboard power supply had started to put out 11.8 V instead of the expected 5V.

So having been running on over voltage all resistors hot, all chips behaving wrong and overly hot then what do you do ?

I was frustrated and was at first going to try to measure every single piece and then decide what to toss and what not. But luckily day after I had come to my senses. I think its built into us to try to preserve. What does it cost, the time to evaluate every component vs tossing them. And what does it cost to potentially have component in later experiment that might not behave as expected. So i tossed it all, chips, transistors, resistors, LED’s, everything.

I think same lesson also often applies for code, we are to conservative on old code, to patch it even if it makes little sense instead of tossing it and make room for new and better code.