Re:Beware of the Turing tar-pit (2004)
by a_wild_dandan on Sunday May 05, 2024 @07:22PM
(#40269536)
And they're expensive. You pay thrice:
1. Engineering the generalized solution, then
2. Carrying the cognitive burden of this new indirection layer, and finally
3. Ripping out this premature -- and so likely wrong -- abstraction
Premature abstractions are like alcohol: fun borrowed from the future, and paid back later with interest. If unavoidable, choose the abstraction most narrowly scoped to your actual code base, not a future one. Humans suck at prediction. Ask me how I know.
Re:Beware of the Turing tar-pit (2004)
by taneq on Sunday May 05, 2024 @07:30PM
(#40269575)
I like the comparison with alcohol, and on a tangent from that... I wonder if the 'Ballmer Peak' is partly explicable by being just drunk enough to avoid this kind of abstraction procrastination.
1. Engineering the generalized solution, then
2. Carrying the cognitive burden of this new indirection layer, and finally
3. Ripping out this premature -- and so likely wrong -- abstraction
Premature abstractions are like alcohol: fun borrowed from the future, and paid back later with interest. If unavoidable, choose the abstraction most narrowly scoped to your actual code base, not a future one. Humans suck at prediction. Ask me how I know.