use Perl

• But what's a "problem"? (Score:1)

  by Adrian (66)

  Many people cite the famous quote "Premature optimization root of all evil", but that's just a specific case of a more general problem: trying to fix things that aren't identified as a problem. YAGNI is God.

  I, of course, agree completely :-)

  However it can be tricky to pull off if different people have different ideas of what a "problem" is. To me, duplicate and/or unclear code is a big problem. Something that needs fixing straight away. Other people don't seem to think that way unfortunately.
  • Re:But what's a "problem"? (Score:2)

    by drhyde (1683)

    I'm of the opinion that premature generalisation of code is just as evil as premature optimisation. So many people want to write all-things-to-all-men generic frameworks when all their customer has asked for is Hello World.
    • Re:But what's a "problem"? (Score:1)

      by Adrian (66)

      I agree completely that premature generalisation that creates the kind of uber-frameworks that many Java folk seem enamoured off is evil.

      That's not my aim however. I'm removing duplication. I'm solving an existing problem with less code. I am very definitely not trying to solve any general problem that isn't in the code already.
      • Re:But what's a "problem"? (Score:2)

        by drhyde (1683)

        I wasn't talking about you - or indeed about anyone in particular. The thread just prompted me to repeat something I was ranting about in the pub last night.
        • Re:But what's a "problem"? (Score:1)

          by Adrian (66)

          In that case rant away :-)
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Aristotle (5147)

      Architecture astronauts [joelonsoftware.com]?
• The problem of course... (Score:1)

  by Alias (5735)

  The problem of course, is that YAGNI also stands for You Are Gunna Need It, and it's often bloody difficult to tell which one it is.
  
  I have this happen regularly. I admit I tend to be a bit "visionary" and see further ahead than many, and as a result a lot of my first implementations tend to be very general. They used to often be overly general, although I've tried to retrain myself a bit more lately.
  
  The problem of course is that when you think you Ain't gunna need something that will be hard to change to us
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Aristotle (5147)

    I haven’t had any luck trying to track this down, but Knuth is said to have something along the lines that each problem in software can be solved with either more or less abstraction, and that experience tells us which one is the way to go.

    (If someone has a citation, I’d love to know it.)
• My corrollary (Score:2)

  by petdance (2468)

  My take is that any code that's written that doesn't need to be written, including any generalization, is by definition premature.

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