On YAGNI
Written 02 Mar 2004
Sometimes during design and development of an application you encounter something, maybe it's a feature, perhaps its a design decision, whatever it is there is a certain "cost" involved. Should the "cost" be paid upfront, when it is initially seen? Should it be paid later? The following article by Charles Miller entitled: Defending YAGNI provides a good analysis of the situation.
Two things to learn from the article: 1) What "costs" must be assumed early in the project (good security, error handling); and 2) each project is different, needing a fresh YAGNI approach to it.