Quick and dirty prototype of the above algo/shape/code using Vim syntax highlighting. The code in the screenshot is a function to convert a mouse click (mx, my) into the location (line_index, pos) of the character at that point on the screen. The problem is much of this function is boilerplate shared with several other places, such as the code to draw text on screen, compute the height of a wrapped line, etc. The boilerplate makes it difficult to see the business logic unique to this particular function, and so creates pressure to prematurely create an abstraction to "DRY things out". Highlighting the shape of the boilerplate in pink helps the eye to focus to the unique business logic in the protrusions, and so counters the pressure to hide the boilerplate before I've figured out the best way to do so.

I love this!