alt Hacker News> Chet is saying "if we interpret today's requirement this way, what we do today has no value, if we interpret today's requirement this other way, what we do today has value".
He is certainly not saying that. The premise is that the simple thing has value for today, the complicated thing has value for today and in 3 weeks time.
> than taking 5 minutes to pick the correct solution between two simple solutions, one compatible with in 3 weeks and one not.
The choice is between a simple solution that will solve today’s issue and a complicated solution (which will take more time) that will also solve an hypothetical situation in 3 weeks.
> in the situation in the article, the author has not enough information to know if Chet solution is complicated or not something needed.
The premise of the article is that the solution is indeed complicated and not something needed today. You may have also been in similar situation. You don’t invalidate an argument by pointing that the premise isn’t true when there’s no argument made that it will always hold true.
Saying that P imply Q, does not mean P is always true.
Let me answer to your 2 comments here.
My criticism against YAGNI as a sane approach is not that things cannot be out-of-scope or over-engineered. My criticism against YAGNI is that it teaches developers to be unable to see a situation and think "yeah, maybe it's a bad over-engineering thing, or maybe it is not". It teaches devs to read __everything__ as bad over-engineering.
In your comment, you are showing exactly that. If you are not "contaminated" by YAGNI, you will look at the situation as described and not jump to the conclusion that "the premise is obviously that ...".
Here, you are saying "He is certainly not saying that". But if you look exactly what he is saying in the dialog, he MAY be saying that, but he also MAY NOT. This is my criticism: YAGNI trained you to misinterpret.
In your other comment, you say that Chet ask for developing something for "a powerful engine as the user may like to go offroad with a trailer". Where this even come from? Are you really unable to mentally conceive, in your head, a simple situation where Chet is talking about the exact motor that was planned from the start?
You are saying that Chet is talking about a motor for going offroad with a trailer, and yet, in the article, Chet says "but in 3 weeks that will be insufficient so since we’re going to need this" followed by "You don’t understand. We’re definitely going to need it. See, here’s an example…" followed by "But we really are…".
And at no point, absolutely no point, you thought "wait, maybe Chet is not being excited by a crazy hypothetical situation, maybe Chet is just talking about something ... we are really going to need it ... because it is in today's project goal, because it is just written that it is what we need to build and what the users are asking for".
You keep saying "the premise", but "the premise" is my criticism. I understand that the author is presenting the situation as if Chet is getting out of scope and uselessly complex. My criticism is that in the described situation, the author should recognised that this premise is just an assumption, and that he should ask for more information.
Maybe another example to illustrate. "Hello, my name is Bill, and I really think it's a bad idea to put wall paint in food. Let's take this situation, my friend Bob is coming to help me to cook, and he says "oh, I think it would be better if this birthday cake was more colorful". I immediatly said "Nope, No way", I knew he wanted to add wall paint in the cake. Bob said "maybe we can go to the shop and get ...". "No" I interrupted him. I would not go to the DYI shop to buy wall paint, it's ridiculous."
According to you, you are saying "well, it is the premise of the article that Bob want to use wall paint in the cake". But beyond the premise, this article still shows that Bill has a totally useless and strange reaction: normally, Bill should not have jumped to the conclusion that Bob want to put wall paint in the food.
Well, this conversation with you is a good illustration of why YAGNI is a terrible idea. In this whole conversation, you really struggled even conceive a situation where someone like Chet will use the same language but will not want to replace the project motor for another one to do offtrail with a trailer, but was simply talking about the motor that was planned all along in the project.
Unfortunately, because of YAGNI, there are more and more devs that are unable to see useful discussion without jumping on the conclusion that the whole discussion should be discarded.