merlyn at stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) wrote:
> >>>>> "Robert" == Robert M Solovay <solovay at Math.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
> 
> Robert> On 16 Mar 2003, Cees de Groot wrote:
> 
> >> TSTTCPW is to grab a SourceForge account and use DVS fileIn/fileOut.
> 
> Robert> 	What does TSTTCPW stand for?
> 
> "The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work"

I know Randal knows this but perhaps there are others out there that
would like some background on this acronym:

It's an XP "saying". XP as in eXtreme Programmig. More or less it means
that a simple solution that works, even though it isn't the best
solution or the prettiest, is better to begin with because you will
learn more about the problem and then later you can refactor it *if
needed*. Often that last part never occurs. ;-)

There are plenty of those sayings in XP that are really catchy. Even if
you are not going to use XP it is worth reading a bit about it - it
simply contains a lot of "developer wisdom".

I also like the variant on TSTTCPW that goes "You aren't gonna need
it.". You know, we are always overengineering our solutions, probably
due to psychological reasons. You really need to use this one as a
mantra:

You: "Hmmmm, perhaps in the future I can split this one up and then
reuse the gubbathingy from the wheelydink. What was that again?"
Inner voice goes: "You aren't gonna need it."
You: "Oh, yeah, you are right. Darn, it would have been fun hacking
it..."

:-)

regards, Göran