The YAGNI principle says that we should not build any code that we do not currently need. But some parts of our systems benefit from being built from data rather than from code. Therefore if we follow YAGNI we could never build such code. But wait? What about the rules of simplicity?

I’m been struggling for years with notions like having empathy with our mistakes, Kerth’s Prime Directive, and the like. Springing from a couple of notes on the extremeprogramming group, and a blog entry from Dale Emery, here’s my latest rant.