Comments on Turbulent Intellect: YAGNI Abuse

Completely agreed

2011-04-25T14:20:34.979-05:00

Completely agreed

Thanks for sharing your own experience on the topi...

2011-04-21T19:15:04.740-05:00

Thanks for sharing your own experience on the topic. I definitely understand where you're coming from, and I can believe that you are really facing YAGNI scenarios. There's a big difference between an architecture astronaut and someone who is just trying to isolate things and make them testable.

I want to stress again that it's not YAGNI that I have a problem with. You can't really ever have too much YAGNI. Either you need something right now, or you don't. And if you don't, there's no reason to implement or prepare for it.

But I do very strongly believe that it's important to respect that proper testing legitimately imposes some needs. You aren't gonna need to offer 3 different implementation of algorithm X. But if you're unit testing, you ARE gonna need to test that the things that use X are using it properly, without having to jump through hoops to set up scenarios that will play nice with the real X. You aren't gonna need to support 3 alternative notification mechanisms. But you ARE gonna need to test the things that call those mechanisms, so that you can run your test suite without firing off emails to everyone.

Doing TDD and test-first development really helps to draw a clear and well-defined boundary between which abstractions are "because in the future we'll need X", and which are "because I need to reliably and reproducibly test Y right now."

Chris, great post! It's interesting that I ca...

2011-04-21T13:04:43.971-05:00

Chris, great post!

It's interesting that I can say that, because the point of your post is actually quite the opposite of what I've been feeling/saying a lot lately. Unlike you (as it seems), instead of being around anti-design people, I find myself around people who feel the need to add 5 layers of abstraction for the simplest, one-off features, to which I've adopted "SYAGNI" (Seriously, you aren't gonna need it).

It is interesting how one's surroundings and co-workers at opposite ends of the spectrum can shape opposite opinions on the same topic (too much or not enough YAGNI)...and still agree on its meaning and its importance.

Here are few more links I love to reference when talking YAGNI:
* YouArentGonnaNeedIt
* DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork
* BuildForTodayDesignForTomorrow

Cheers!
-Nate