Premature Optimization?
Joel Spolsky put it amazingly well when he said, of developers, that "the best ones are an order of magnitude better than the average ones." Completely agree with that. However, the best ones oftentimes have the problem that they know they're that much better than the guy in the next cube/desk/office/bottega.
So, in an attempt to "enlighten" their peers, they build the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately, they forget to also build the most important part of shelter, the roof. They're so busy shining the marble on the doorstep they forget to look up and see that they forgot to put a door!
Funny thing is, I always used to fall onto the idealist side of the fence. I'm working with some guys that are so far to that side that I've had no choice but to become the pragmatist of the group to keep us grounded in reality.
"Yes, we can make Service A talk to Service B and have it shoot confetti out when it's finished, but does anyone else actually want that?"
A lot to be said for our Lean/TOC brethren . . .
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A co-worker taught me how to use YAGNI, "You ain't gonna need it". As a consultant I think one of the roles we play is validating the work done by full-time employees, helping either defend their definition of the scope of work, but also verifying that what they are building isn't the biggest box possible. Management tends to understand refactoring better than developers give them credit for.
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