[cauch]

> Your example does not work with the article because the simplistic approach is already proven to be an ok design.

Where is it done? No where in the article the author said "Chet said it will not work in 3 week, so I demonstrated that it will work in 3 weeks". The author just __assume__ it is an ok design.

What I'm telling you is that you and the author are acting in a way that shut down the conversation in case you are right AND in case you wrong.

Your answer to that is "I'm mentally impossible to conceive a scenario where the author missed something, did not realise the 'simple-one-axle-mounting' approach will fail". That is such a red flag.

> The complex approach (maybe a non standard suspension) is for an hypothetical scenario that Chet believes will occur in 3 weeks.

This is not what I ask you. I ask you to say what Chet should say in the situation where Chet is right, where the author design is incorrect and Chet scenario is not hypothetical. You keep twisting back "no but let's just pretend it cannot happen". This is my worry: are you even able to conceive that it can happen?

> That means the solution is OK and the implementation will provide some value for the customer.

What? That is definitively not how normal people would understand this sentence. Are you a native english speaker? According to you "I could do this simplistic thing now but it would not work" is an impossible sentence? Or that this sentence is saying that the solution is OK because the sentence contains "I could do this thing"?

> How does he know that?

Well, that's the point. In this step of this dialog, you don't know yet, and yet you already concluded that Chet does not know and that you know.

> Where's the argument, not merely examples as in the rest of the dialogue, but real objective facts and numbers

Chet is introducing the problem, he is shut down before he can even give his first example. Chet may have plenty of objective facts and numbers, but the author shut down the conversation before it even happen. In this dialog, Chet is __trying__ to bring facts and numbers, starting by a concrete illustration, but he is interrupted before he can do it.

You are so full of it. You are saying "Chet did not arrive and slap the author with a book full of facts, so it is the proof that Chet has no idea of what he is talking about and should be shut down before he can prove this assumption is wrong".

> Will we really need it?

You don't know if you really need it or not, you don't know if Chet has facts and numbers. Because YAGNI is shit, you just assumed that the situation is over-engineer, while you have no idea of what the situation is and stop people who try to explain it to you.

> We know that we don't need it today.

No you don't. You just stop Chet explaining and interrupt him.

> What will change in a few week that will make it a requirement? Again what needed here is objective facts. Not what-if scenarios.

This is what I saying from the start: when Chet reacts like that, the fact that the author does not say "wait a minute, do you have objective facts" is a red flag. The fact that the author goes to the what-if scenario that his design will obviously work, without providing any objective facts, is the problem.

> Why the rush?

Where is there any rush. The situation is extremely simple. The guy say: "hear me you, I think I will be wasting me time doing this". The author answers "shut up" and __assume__ that Chet has no argument.

> That's all the questions I would have asked if I was not familiar with the project. But if you're the project lead, the only thing that would have led you to question yourself is if Chet has said the simplistic approach does not work. But it does.

I saw very experienced devs failing at that all the time. In this article, the author is assuming he has a good understanding of the project and shut down anyone who can bring important information.

Your approach: "I'm the lead, so I cannot be wrong, so I assume Chet is incorrect when he said the simplistic approach will not work" is so bad. Do you even realise that?

You are a perfect example of what I was talking about. What would you have lost in just hearing Chet out? But now, YAGNI is just shit, it pushes people to have this attitude to assume that only them know the truth.

[skydhash]

> According to you "I could do this simplistic thing now but it would not work" is an impossible sentence?

Because that’s not what it said. If someone is talking to me, I don’t invent sentences in my head for them and assume things that they haven’t said.

That’s what you’re doing, inventing a whole situation outside of what the author described because you keep adding things that the author has not mentioned.

I have my interpretation of the dialog. And I agree with the author that Chet should focus on the simple thing now, and je can always wait later to refactor it to handle the future situation.

If you want to discuss an alternate interpretation, do it within the confine of the dialog. Don’t add your own words to it.

[cauch]

> Because that’s not what it said.

What it said is "I could do this simplistic thing now but ... that will be insufficient"

It LITERALLY says that it will not work, that it is not a good solution.

Even if Chet is wrong in his prediction, you quoted Chet and pretended that this thing that Chet is saying is a proof that this solution will work. This is so obviously not at all Chet's opinion.

And I'm sure you are going to INVENT "but Chet does not know what will happen in 3 weeks". Firstly, again, your "proof" is a quote from Chet, who, according to you, demonstrate that this solution is ok while that sentence is used by Chet to explain that the solution is not ok. But secondly, you have no idea why Chet is saying what he is saying, you INVENT that Chet does not know, does not have facts and numbers, while there are tons of real life example where it is easy and correct to predict that in 3 weeks something will not work anymore.

> ... inventing a whole situation outside of what the author described ...

I don't.

In the situation described by the author, is it true, is it factual that Chet thinks it will not work: YES, he is saying exactly that.

Is it factual that Chet is trying to provide more information but the author shut him down before hearing them: YES, this is factual.

Your only little argument is "let's imagine that Chet proposal, that he NEVER explains because he is interrupted, is bad". All I'm saying is that you have no idea what Chet argument is, you just assumed. This is fact. Can you tell me where, factually, in the written dialog, Chet explain his understanding and this understanding is indeed incorrect? Can you point me to these sentences? They don't exist.

You see "3 weeks" and concluded that "it is out of scope and/or over-engineered", which is obviously a bad conclusion as it is very easy to find plenty of example where this conclusion is totally wrong.

I don't want an alternate interpretation, there is no need for it. Does the author shut Chet down before Chet explains himself? YES. There is nothing to interpret, it's just a fact. Then, based on that, you said things that are BS, such as "Chet said '3 weeks' so it is the proof that it is out-of-scope". I then gave you a counter-example showing that your reasoning is wrong, and your only argument was "you invented this example so it does not count".

[skydhash]

> What it said is "I could do this simplistic thing now but ... that will be insufficient"

> It LITERALLY says that it will not work, that it is not a good solution

You have a strange definition of insufficient.

> Can you tell me where, factually, in the written dialog, Chet explain his understanding and this understanding is indeed incorrect

Both the author and I never said that the complicated thing is wrong or incorrect. YAGNI is basically saying “not now”. Meaning we can revisit when the situation calls for it, but not today.

YAGNI is a matter of priority and resources allocation. You don’t solve problems you don’t have or unlikely risks.

Do you set up a cold room in your house and buy food for the next month because you know you will be hungry then? No. You buy a fridge and groceries for the next few days. Not because a catastrophic event can’t happen, but because your budget is limited and/or you have better things to do with that money.

Complicated things cost more than simple things (to build and maintain) and take longer to ship and produce value. The only reason to not go with simple thing is when it does not work, not when it’s insufficient. We already know it does not handle every little feature, but it will work for now.

[cauch]

> You have a strange definition of insufficient.

You have a strange definition of "okay". "Insufficient" is definitively not okay. The definition of "insufficient" is "less than needed". How is that "okay"? And if it is not "okay", than, yes, it is not a good solution.

Thank you to demonstrate that people who pushes for YAGNI are delivering "insufficient" work and think it is "okay".

> Both the author and I never said that the complicated thing is wrong or incorrect. YAGNI is basically saying “not now”. Meaning we can revisit when the situation calls for it, but not today.

And you have no idea if the situation calls for avoiding the problem today or not today. Take back the car example: if you install wheels that are incompatible with the planned engine, you need to fix this problem __today__.

Your code will fail in 3 week because of a mistake you are making TODAY. The proof: if you install the correct wheels today, then nothing will fail in 3 weeks. The failure that will happen in 3 weeks (and it will happen: car engineers have tested it and are clear on that, it is the law of physics) is not due to a problem that was born in 3 weeks, the failure will be due to the bad decision made today. This is a TODAY problem.

Your reasoning is totally crazy, imagine if it was considered seriously: "oh, you noticed a bug in my code during code review. Well, let's ship the code in production and wait for users to raise a bug ticket, because before then, the problem does not exist".

> YAGNI is a matter of priority and resources allocation. You don’t solve problems you don’t have or unlikely risks.

And in the case of Chet, you have prioritized NOTHING. You still have no idea of what Chet was raising. You have no idea of what are the risks. You have no idea if your current plan is even the correct plan or not.

Imagine the following situation: "oh, we took the wrong road, if we continue tomorrow we will arrive in Berlin instead of Paris". Only very stupid people will say "no, that's a problem for tomorrow, let's just spend all the time in between doing something totally useless that we will need to undo tomorrow".

> You buy a fridge and groceries for the next few days.

You realise your contradiction here: you are saying you buy TODAY food for when you will be hungry IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS. According to your logic, you should not do that. What you should do is to go to the shop every single time you feel hungry and buy only one item, the one you want to eat now.

> Complicated things cost more than simple things (to build and maintain) and take longer to ship and produce value. The only reason to not go with simple thing is when it does not work, not when it’s insufficient.

Simple things that have no value at all cost more than complicated things. When Chet come up, he is saying "hey, I think I notice we are planning to build something that has absolutely no value". Your reaction is "no, it is better to do something useless with no value than something more complicated that has value".

And again, as I guess you will not get it: maybe Chet is wrong. The problem is that you just ignore Chet. Maybe he is wrong, but maybe he is right, you have absolutely not idea.

> We already know it does not handle every little feature, but it will work for now.

It will not work for now. If you install the wrong wheels on a car, the car is useless until you install the engine.

The important thing is not "the task of today", it is to deliver what the user needs. Here, Chet is saying that he thinks you are planning to build something that is a waste of time, something that will not deliver what the users need.

The reaction should be "Chet, maybe you are right, but maybe you are wrong, let's check together". Instead, the reaction was to interrupt him and act as if the users care about today's work more than the real product.

[skydhash]

The whole car example is flawed because insufficient does not mean wrong or incorrect.

> And in the case of Chet, you have prioritized NOTHING. You still have no idea of what Chet was raising. You have no idea of what are the risks. You have no idea if your current plan is even the correct plan or not.

Why are you so sure the author cannot compare <complicated thing> and <simple thing>? Or he has not considered <complicated thing> before even Chet and discarded it?

> When Chet come up, he is saying "hey, I think I notice we are planning to build something that has absolutely no value"

You’re again inventing stuff. The simple thing has value today. It will be insufficient in three weeks. It is not insufficient today. If we implement it, the user will have a working solution way sooner instead of waiting for the complicated thing to be ready.

How do you value your user’s time?

> The important thing is not "the task of today", it is to deliver what the user needs.

What the user needs today and what it will need in three weeks are different things. You and Chet have been ignoring the user’s need for today.

If someone wants some data outside of a system and you can write a quick perl script in 30 minutes to produce a CSV, you do it. You don’t argue about setting up a whole ETL pipeline because that will be needed in 3 weeks and the perl script is insufficient. Especially when that pipeline will take days to implement. You can have a whole set of examples and what not. But we can discuss that after the perl script is written and the needed data is exported.

[cauch]

> The whole car example is flawed because insufficient does not mean wrong or incorrect.

In the car example, the solution proposed by the team leader is insufficient. The result is that the solution proposed by the team leader will lead to either the project to fail or to a waste of money.

> Why are you so sure the author cannot compare <complicated thing> and <simple thing>?

What are you talking about? I'm not saying you cannot compare <complicated thing> and <simple thing>, I'm saying that the author does NOT COMPARISON: he has no idea what Chet is talking about, because Chet want to explain and the author shut him down.

You cannot say that Chet's solution, which is more complicated, is less valuable than the simple solution, because you don't even know if the simple solution has any value.

> The simple thing has value today.

No, YOU DON'T KNOW THAT. You invent that. Take the car example: having a wheel but no engine has no value. There are ton of other examples: for example, if someone is talking about a bug that occur because in three weeks we are in 2026 and that the code has a bug that make the code unusable if the year is 2026. If the product is released in February 2026, then the simple thing has zero value. (that's a made-up example for the sake of simplicity, but having bad design that destroy the quality soon after is a real thing, very common)

> How do you value your user’s time?

And how do you value users leaving because in 3 weeks that see the product is not able to do something they were expecting?

> What the user needs today and what it will need in three weeks are different things.

You don't know that. In the example of the car, the user don't need a 1 wheel car with no engine.

Again, because you have no idea what Chet is talking about, you have no idea if what Chet is talking about impacts today's users.

> blablabla ETL blablabla

You keep giving example where someone over-engineer (or ask for working on something too early, or ask to work on something out of scope, or ask to adapt the current goal based on hypothetical future goal, ...). EVERYONE HERE agrees that this is bad and should be avoided. The disagreement is that in the dialog in the article, the author did a terrible job at assessing if Chet contribution was a good or a bad thing (based on these criteria), because the author has drunk the YAGNI cool-aid and jumped to the conclusion it was a bad thing while there are plenty of situations where Chet will act exactly like that when it is not some of these bad things.

(and again, my criticism is not these "bad" things are not bad and should not be avoided, my criticism is that some devs say "YAGNI" and shut down the contributions that are fully relevant to do a good job and deliver value. A simple solution is to not be an obnoxious d*khead and just listen to Chet, to check if it is a real bad thing or not, and act accordingly like an adult instead of behaving like a little kid)

PS: I note that you just ignore elements where you cannot answer. (for example, the food that you don't buy one item at the time, the fact that "prioritization" means nothing when you don't even know between what and what you are prioritizing, ...)