At least partly, it’s a form of choice-supportive bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias).
Your mind cannot live with the idea that you spent many, many hours learning an ugly API, so it makes you think it is better than it is.
Your mind cannot live with the idea that you spent many, many hours learning an ugly API, so it makes you think it is better than it is.
I've later come to suspect that this glittering is sometimes useful as… fuel? Feeling-of-progress hands-on motivation-fuel.