What is “over-engineering” as applied to software? [closed]

Answer 1

There is this discussion at Joel on Software that starts with,

creating extensive class hierarchies for an imagined future problem that does not yet exist, is a kind of over-engineering, and is therefore, bad.

And, gets into a discussion with examples.

Answer 2

I think the best answers to your question can be found in this other qestion

Answer 3

Over-engeneering means architecting and designing the applcation with more components than it really should have according to the requirements list.

There is a big difference between over-engeneering and creating an extensible applcaiton, that can be upgraded as reqirements change. If I can think of an example i'll edit the post.

Answer 4

Quoting from here: "...Implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them."

Answer 5

To me, over-engineering is including anything that you don't need and that you don't know you're going to need. If you catch yourself saying that a feature might be nice if the requirements change in a certain way, then you might be over-engineering. Basically, over-engineering is violating YAGNI.

Answer 6

Contrary to popular belief, over-engineering is really a phenomena that appears when engineers get "hubris" and think they understand the user.

I made a simple diagram to illustrate this: