What is soft coding? (Anti-pattern)

Question

I found the Wikipedia entry on the soft coding anti-pattern terse and confusing. So what is soft coding? In what settings is it a bad practice (anti-pattern)? Also, when cou

Answer 1

The main point of the Daily WTF article on soft coding is that because of premature optimization and fear a system that is very well defined and there is no duplicated knowledge is altered and becomes more complex without any need.

The main thing that you should keep in mind is if your changes actually improve your system and avoid to lightly label something as anti-pattern and avoid it by all means. Configuring your system and avoiding hardcoding is a simple cure for duplicated knowledge in your system (see point 11 : "DRY Don't Repeat Yourself" in The Pragmatic Programmer Quick Reference Guide) This is the driving need behind the suggestion of avoiding hardcoding. I.e. there should be ideally only one place in you system (that would be code or configuration) that should be altered if you have to change something as simple as an error message.