Agile Ramblings

The Dangers of Costco-Style Programming and the New-Toy Effect

November 20th, 2005

A good friend of mine, Iraklis Kourtidis, coined the phrase Costco-style programming. He described it by example: “I’ve had spinach in one of my dinner dishes each night this week. Not because I particuarly like spinach or it actually went with the meal, but because I bought a big bag at Costco and now I have to use it up.”

He was describing the software tean’s use of annotations, a C# feature that was new at the time. Developers frequently abuse some tool, trick or feature because it is easy and available.

Similarly, I described the new-toy effect as also motivating developers: you have a shiny, new toy available and you want to play with it everywhere and anywhere. Who cares that is doesn’t make sense that Godzilla would fight an omnious basketball; I’ve got a new Godzilla toy and he’s gonna fight everything.

The combination of Costco style programming and the new toy effect can be very dangerous for a software application. Developers would spam code bases, add useless, complicated features and even develop entire products motvated by these pressures. Though a completely different rant, I think much of the Internet Bubble of the late 1990’s can be explained by this; the Internet was new and available and lots of kids wanted to play with their new toy everywhere and anywhere. And the effect is worse when many went to Costco and have new toys.

Entry Filed under: Random Thoughts