From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8091e906d8ef17b2,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "W.Wesley Groleau (Wes)" Subject: More features! (was some ethnic notation) Date: 1996/05/24 Message-ID: <9605241419.AA05235@most>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 156522614 sender: Ada programming language comments: To: info-ada@VM1.NoDak.EDU mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-05-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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.) -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- W. Wesley Groleau (Wes) Office: 219-429-4923 Magnavox - Mail Stop 10-40 Home: 219-471-7206 Fort Wayne, IN 46808 elm (Unix): wwgrol@pseserv3.fw.hac.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------