Yes! For years I thought I was the crazy one for telling our clients, "we don't really need to validate names. if they give you the wrong name, it's their problem; and it's more work for us; and we'll probably fuck it up and make someone mad". The answer was always "do it anyway, it's what we agreed on." The client feels like we are screwing them if we make the work easier, even though the end result is a higher-quality more usable website. Sigh.
The comment about developers making work for themselves is also spot on. I answer a lot of programming questions, and the questions are always asked because the programmer has reached the end of a twisty maze of his own creation. Turn around, walk, spin around, and try again. You'll find a better solution.
And oh yeah, I do this all the fucking time. Pick any random github project of mine, and you'll see 8 revisions of the API before I finally pick one that's not retarded. Even then. (Side note: I don't change the API after I release.)
> The comment about developers making work for themselves is also spot on. I answer a lot of programming questions, and the questions are always asked because the programmer has reached the end of a twisty maze of his own creation. Turn around, walk, spin around, and try again. You'll find a better solution.
This deserves to be repeated a thousand times.
How many times bad code and bad ideas stick around simply because those that came up with them can't even imagine that they could do without them.
I have run into this many times with people that try Plan 9, 'where is my pet unix "feature"?!?', guess what? It was not a 'feature' and it causes untold pain, and that is why it is not in Plan 9.
Just last week somebody was in the Go mailinglist asking why there is no preprocessor! sigh
The comment about developers making work for themselves is also spot on. I answer a lot of programming questions, and the questions are always asked because the programmer has reached the end of a twisty maze of his own creation. Turn around, walk, spin around, and try again. You'll find a better solution.
And oh yeah, I do this all the fucking time. Pick any random github project of mine, and you'll see 8 revisions of the API before I finally pick one that's not retarded. Even then. (Side note: I don't change the API after I release.)
Anyway, best rant ever.