I’m a software engineering fashion victim, so when somebody comes to ask if some new feature should go in the design or not, I reflexively yell, “YAGNI!” YAGNI requires little thought, and it’s usually a good not a bad a wise-sounding answer.
However, I think Cameron Purdy is riding the crest of a new wave when he writes:
“Use your brain.”
I predict that next week, once the Great YAGNI Flamewar is but a distant memory, the sloganeers will pick up Cameron’s thought, and acronymize it as “UYB”.
So, in future, when somebody asks me about design features, I’ll be yelling, “UYB, UYB!”
Comments
UYB is a lot harder to pronounce.
I'm sure I've heard it pronounced somewhere in the Ewok celebration song.
http://members.aol.com/forknistl/starwars/swewok.html
hahaha .. i finally get an acronym ;-)
(YASA - yet another stupid acronym)
UYFBYFM is a bit harder to pronounce, but a tad more apropos, no?
But UYB serves a different purpose than YAGNI. When someone comes up to my cubical and asks my opinion on a design question, if I'm trying to give them the brush-off, I don't shout out "YAGNI", I tell them to "Bugger off!".
Actually, I don't, because I'm not British, but it sounds awefully good, doesn't it?
Anyhow, YAGNI is what I say to them after I've heard their suggestion and it sounds to me like they've been infected with the latest Software Engineering Fashion and are using far too many object / patterns / unit tests / mini-languages / or whatever. It would be a shame to waste YAGNI as a synonym for "Bugger off!" because "You Are Going-overboard on Newfangled Idioms" is just too many syllables.