Every feature has a complexity burden it imposes on the overall system, and also a risk profile to causing failures as the overall environment changes. Some fe

Every feature has a complexity burden it imposes on the overall system, and also a risk profile to causing failures as the overall environment changes. Some features are definitely not worth the complexity they impose. Sometimes a feature is so important you need to add it despite the systemic risk that it obviously carries. Most of the time the designer or implementer doesn’t stop to even consider this analysis and just fires off some code to add the feature and lets it become “technical debt” because it’s SEP at that point. The best engineers have an immediate intuition about these types of features and a visceral reaction when asked to code them. Something along the lines of, “I have a bad feeling about this” to “No way I’m coding this, it’s a metaphorical bridge just waiting to collapse.” If malice requires intent I think most of the time there isn’t actual malice. If malice can stem from ignorance then I fully agree with you.