3 ms·

YAGNI is great one. I wish STTCPW (Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work) made for a better acronym. Also related: KISS (which I prefer to interpret as "Keep

• mrec 10y ago
  STTCPW has problems aside from its acronym; back when I was working in an XP-ish team we had any number of arguments which I eventually realized came from a fundamental ambiguity in this principle: does it mean 1. Make the simplest incremental change to the existing system to satisfy requirements, or 2. Make the simplest overall system which satisfies requirements? The first is fine for prototyping when you're moving fast and breaking things, but guarantees technical debt out the wazoo over the longer term. The second makes for much better code but you may waste a lot of time on refactoring churn if you do too much of it before requirements have really stabilized.