[clue] Antifeatures.

[Chris Fedde]

There is a related concept called the anti-pattern.  If you are familiar
with the Gang of Four book which talks about an idea in software
development that is related to a concept from architecture that describes
patterns of design.

Like most metaphors we tend to stretch them in the software world.

So an anti-pattern is a way that things commonly go wrong. One of them is
called "The Golden Hammer" which describes a tool that is so expensive that
we must use it for all of our work or we are assumed to be doing it wrong.
Oracle is an example and perhaps so too is the Microsoft technology
stack.   Another is "Design by Committee"  a group is so worried about
getting it wrong that they produce nothing but dodges.  The Affordable
Health care Act website is an example of that.

C2.com is always a great place to go for pithy technical discussion:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AntiPattern and
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AntiPatternsCatalog are couple good links on this
topic.

chris


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 1:50 PM, David L. Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:

> Yaverot wrote:
> >> But I think it's a useful idea and especially the point that they can't
> exist in Free Software.
> >> So I wanted to share.
> >
> > Firefox is excellent at designing anti-features (just because they can't
> charge doesn't change
> > the fact they intentionally do malicious things to their users).  Most
> recently disabling the
> > escape key for stopping animated images.  The solution isn't to pay
> Mozilla, but to upgrade back
> > to the older version, or jump to Chrome, Opera or other options.
> >
> > So they can exist in free software, but they shouldn't survive long
> there.
>
> Perhaps this is an example of a similar situation that didn't survive:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project
>
> So is your example a deliberate decision about that feature?  Or is it a
> change in approach that
> can't be disentangled from the feature you like?
>
> Now I suppose we have to argue about the difference between antifeatures
> and design choices users
> don't like (a la GNOME 3).  Is deciding not to make a configuration option
> for every conceivable
> behavior an antifeature? (rhetorically speaking)
>
> Dave
> _______________________________________________
> clue mailing list: clue at cluedenver.org
> For information, account preferences, or to unsubscribe see:
> http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://cluedenver.org/pipermail/clue/attachments/20140205/4e47da29/attachment.html