Re:Do We Worship Complexity?
by emsy on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @04:04PM
(#18232746)
The author describes a YAGNI approach. The interviewer and you seem to want a solution that's already generalized and future proof. YAGNI is always the right approach to take at the beginning of a problem. But that's one of the insights that often come with programming experience and reflection. Unfortunately, seniority is an unreliable indicator for either attribute.
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Perhaps one should ask the interviewer whether they want a YAGNI-style solution or a more general/abstract solution. If you can give both, you may really impress the interviewer.
Asking first to understand the needs and intention of the application should be a first step anyhow. Diving into the deep-end face first and coding is rarely the correct approach (except maybe a startup racing for market-share).
> generalized and future proof
Reminds me of a blog post I read,
https://www.sebastiansylvan.com/post/the-perils-of-future-co...
At what point does it become over-engineering?
I think the article captures the problem even better than a similar one that was recently on the frontpage of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850836
I can't remember a situation where undergeneralized code came back to bite me. I have however seen (and admittedly written some) prematurely generalized code that became messy legacy code.
Re:Do We Worship Complexity?
by AlexCoventry on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @12:42AM
(#18236177)
You often can't tell up-front. If you never get back more than what you put into an abstraction, it was probably over-engineered.