How simple features become complicated

rc3.org

12 pointsbrm4 comments

"This is why I generally forbid the use of the word 'just' when people are making feature requests."

Agreed! Keeping "just" out of conversations involving feature requests is amazingly hard to do, but in my experience it works.

Laying down that rule does a surprisingly good job of making people aware of when they're getting ahead of themselves, and jumping out of their area of expertise when asking you to do something. "Can't you just ..." teeth grate

Seconded; I've liked that idea and become sensitized to my and others use of Just and Simply, since reading c2.com's wiki - I think the page is "JustIsADangerousWord".

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JustIsaDangerousWord and http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CouldYouJust

Weinberg in one of his consulting books suggested replacing "just" with "have a lot of trouble" (as in, "we'll just add this feature" with "we'll have a lot of trouble adding this feature") and "should" with "isn't" (as in, "that information should be kept here" with "that information isn't kept here"). It's surprisingly effective. I think there was another such magic word or two on his list, but don't remember what they were.

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