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Minimalist trend (Score:5, Insightful)

2011-08-26 12:08:19

by Cthefuture (665326) on Monday June 06, @09:56AM (#36349624)

It's just a fad. It's very similar although not exactly the same as "Not

Invented Here" syndrome caused by developer inexperience and naivety.

Although this has happened countless times the primary example I like to take

out is Java. Java tried to be minimalistic and "simple" by leaving out all

sorts of useful functionality (eg. generics, etc). Now look at it, everything

they left out in the beginning is shoehorned into the current versions and it

sucks because they failed to account for the functionality in the original

design.

What will happen is these products and projects will start out very

minimalistic but will then slowly grow into a bloated, poorly designed pieces

of shit as the developers realize that some features exist for a reason and are

actually needed or just plain useful.

Then there will be backlash against the "idiotic" minimalist approach and we

will start to get over-designed, over-complicated, inefficient,

bureaucratically designed, and slow to implement bloatware which will slowly

shrink into buggy poorly designed pieces of shit as the developers realize that

you can't start giant designs and implement the whole thing at once.

Then there will be backlask against the "idiotic" over-complicated software

so... (this is what is happening now)

Repeat ad nauseum. Einstein had it right: "Make things as simple as possible,

but not simpler." You need to start with a solid flexible, possibly somewhat

complicated design but with the intent and proper planning to only implement a

simple subset of the design at first. Then it can grow into the full-blown

design over time.