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.