"Absolutely refuse to add any feature or line of code unless you need it right now, and need it badly."
As I've gotten older I've seen the value of this rule. Though it sounds merely negative, it can produce effects that seem little short of genius.
As I've gotten older I've seen the value of this rule. Though it sounds merely negative, it can produce effects that seem little short of genius.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...
That means the duplication has to be highly significant and variations need to be few for it to pay off. ... And you'll better hope you have a good set of tests to verify everything is still working.
In most cases it's still a good idea, but it's still a case where you need to argue that you really need it, so it's no exeption at all.
[0] https://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-...
Mind you, software developers aren't the only ones that cause this; a product owner / lead / whoever calls the shots is also very likely to keep bolting features onto a product. Either they have to keep that impulse down, or they too need a system to manage it. Also they shouldn't be afraid of culling existing features; what usually seems to happen is that more and more stuff is bolted on, until it's too much and they just rewrite the whole thing from scratch, leading to a clean, lean new application - often missing some features that older users like. Either they do it, or a competitor does.