Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Creeping elegance

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In software development, creeping elegance, related to creeping featurism and second-system effect, is the tendency of programmers to disproportionately emphasize elegance in software at the expense of other requirements such as functionality, shipping schedule, and usability.

Creeping elegance is also forced by customers and sales personnel in the last stages of software development. Often one comes up with "just another feature" before the delivery date, and the software developer is left with the hopeless case of prioritizing between delivery on time according to schedule or to fully satisfy customers and/or the sales department.

References

Creeping elegance Wikipedia