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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    "Feature bloat" is a myth (was Re: HEAD open for commits)
From:       Guillaume Laurent <glaurent () telegraph-road ! org>
Date:       2002-11-30 0:12:02
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On Friday 29 November 2002 14:38, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> I don't think that we need to worry about lack of features anymore.  We
> should worry more about feature bloat.

"Feature bloat" is mostly a myth. Any software company knows that writing code 
is an very costly process, and since you're a retired professional 
programmer, you can't ignore it yourself. Writing code takes time, 
maintaining it takes even more. Few add features just for the sake of it, 
they generally do so because they have a business case for a given feature.

Joël Spolsky has written a good piece on the subject :

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

<<
A lot of software developers are seduced by the old "80/20" rule. It seems to 
make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you 
convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and 
you can still sell 80% as many copies. 

Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of 
features. In the last 10 years I have probably heard of dozens of companies 
who, determined not to learn from each other, tried to release "lite" word 
processors that only implement 20% of the features. This story is as old as 
the PC. Most of the time, what happens is that they give their program to a 
journalist to review, and the journalist reviews it by writing their review 
using the new word processor, and then the journalist tries to find the "word 
count" feature which they need because most journalists have precise word 
count requirements, and it's not there, because it's in the "80% that nobody 
uses," and the journalist ends up writing a story that attempts to claim 
simultaneously that lite programs are good, bloat is bad, and I can't use 
this damn thing 'cause it won't count my words.
>>

To use another famous example, do you really think a "C++ lite" would be 
feasible ?

I agree that the cost factor is unfortunately not true for communitiy 
developed software, though. Some hackers do "scratch their proverbial itch" 
and try to force their code on everyone else because they're convinced it's 
cool and yearn for recognition. So far I've found KDE to behave fairly well 
in that regard, though. I also find that it's hopeless to expect community 
developed software to reach the same level of finition that a commercial one 
like Mac OS/X. To achieve this takes means we simply don't have (i.e. money).

-- 
					Guillaume.
					http://www.telegraph-road.org
 
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