{"id":276,"date":"2020-02-28T17:26:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T20:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desarrollo-agil.ml\/blog\/?p=276"},"modified":"2020-02-28T17:29:40","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T20:29:40","slug":"over-engineering-in-software-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/52.201.184.187\/blog\/en\/good-habits\/over-engineering-in-software-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Over Engineering in Software Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What I understand as over engineering<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

As software developers we have a double challenge when we write our apps. We must write working readable code, and on the other hand avoid over engineering. In our environment we often refer it as \u2018sending a rocket to the moon\u2019. Obviously, when sending a rocket to the moon is not not the requirement, although in most cases that\u2019s not what we are asked to do. To be more precise, what I understand as over engineering is to make sotfware more complex in order to solve problems we don\u2019t really have, and that we are not likely to have in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to detect over engineering<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

I can think of several ways to detect over engineering. The first that comes to my mind, a bit useless, is how many software design patterns we applied to our code that don\u2019t answer to a real trouble we are trying to solve. Both the lack of design patters and the abuse of them ar signs of bad code. Design patterns are tools that try to fix a concrete problem in software design. If we use them to solve problems we don\u2019t have, we are just getting our code more complicated and unreadable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned before, detecting this once the code is written is quite useless, because while we can refactor, doing so implies an adittional effort. So, how do we detect over engineering in an usefule state of development?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detecting over engineering in an useful situation<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The most useful state to detect over engineering is when we are thinking about design and writing code. That\u2019s the precise moment when the problem arises. How do we detect it before it\u2019s late? I can\u2019t provide a concrete way to do it, but I do have some situations I use as a pattern to raise alarms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n