2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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creeping featurism
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/kreeping feechrizm/ , n. [common] 1. Describes a systematic tendency to
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load more chrome and feature s onto systems at the expense of whatever
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elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. See also feeping
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creaturism. You know, the main problem with BSD Unix has always been
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creeping featurism. 2. More generally, the tendency for anything complicated
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to become even more complicated because people keep saying Gee, it would be
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even better if it had this feature too. (See feature. ) The result is
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usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than
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being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one
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extra little feature to help someone. .. and then another. .. and
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another.... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer.
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The GNU hello program, intended to illustrate GNU command-line switch and
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coding conventions, is also a wonderful parody of creeping featurism; the
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distribution changelog is particularly funny. Usually this term is used to
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describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal
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government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes
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afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping
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elegance.
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