...He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures.

If you want to accord with the Tao,
just do your job, then let go.

Seriously. I don't feel one way or another towards my code. It isn't me, it just is. Some of it gets used, some of it doesn't. Some of what I've written has proven to be amazingly helpful, other parts have proven to be useless. Whatever, it's all the same to me. Once I've written something, I do my best to step away from it (I do still handle debugging and whatnot, but that is just maintenence on some existing code, not MY code). I don't think about it as mine any more, it takes on a life of it's own.

That said, it sounds like your neighbor has an all together different style. If it suits him, let it go. If it doesn't suit him, he'll have to learn that on his own.

As for the virus in the mind (I rather like that phrase) I just let it go. If I need to think about something, I think about it. It's sort of like dieting, it's better to sit down and have a meal than it is to snack around with a lot of finger food all afternoon.