More features! (was some ethnic notation)

More features! (was some ethnic notation)

[W.Wesley Groleau (Wes)]

I think I understand RBKD's intent and agree with it.  But I'll "deliberately
misunderstand" :-) and ride off on one of my favorite hobby-horses. :-)

> Every feature added to a [product] damages the [product] by increasing its
>   size (and therefore at least the perceived complexity, if not the actual
>   complexity).

Depends on what you call a 'feature' and how you handle it.  On more than one
project at more than one company, I have seen code size and complexity
unnecessarily bloated by the apparent attitude that if its requirements are
not explicitly identical, then they can't share code.  Just because ONE of
seven otherwise identically handled objects needs ONE additional capability,
EACH of the objects must have its own independent set of code.

And ten requirements paragraphs requires ten sections of code, each meeting
its OWN requirement AND containing code that has no other purpose but to
prevent it from meeting one of the other requirements--even though all ten
requirements are examples or special cases of the same implicit or even
explicit general requirement.

For those that missed the sarcasm, I'm criticizing, not defending, this
practice.  Not so much to attack the practitioners: it's usually an
application of a personality trait that has value in other situations.
But in software design, people need to be able to abstract and generalize
as much as (if not more than) specialize and handle concrete details.

We need people who don't miss the forest for the trees AND people who
don't miss the trees looking at the forest.  But we seem to already have
plenty of the latter.

(Falls through bottom of soapbox and gets splinters in both legs.  Then
 pours and consumes a mixed metaphor.)
--
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W. Wesley Groleau (Wes)                                Office: 219-429-4923
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