[off topic] Driving Principles of Programming: Ignorance

Well, I have already talked a bit about laziness and egoism, but now time have come to mention - after all - the last (as I count them) third principle: ignorance.

I was pitched to write this after whole week of meetings with two engineers, whose many questions may be rephrased as "what if sky falls down?" After several days I was ready to scream "As heck I care!!!" (and this is really polite form of what I actually wanted to say.)

I have a function to do task A. WTF shall I care here about B, C and D??? Some people just do not get it.

IGNORANCE. The ignorance which is bliss. As programming concerned, ignorance allows programmer to concentrate on particular task, ignoring ever-changing environment his program is ought to work in. Otherwise, if one would try to track all new requirements and developments, his/her attention would be diverted from original task. End result? Task would be always in half finished state.

Egoism and ignorance are very similar. Egoism tells us to ignore other's opinion (a.k.a. critics). Ignorance tells us to ignore other's problems (a.k.a. new requirements).

Like with other two principles, all is good in moderation. Pushing any of the principles to the limit of course goes against the laziness principle. And being too lazy would mean that you are not egoistic. And being too egoistic would mean that you can't ignore yourself. You see now? That's vicious circle of software development. ;)

P.S. How to use ignorance in practice. Ignorance normally results in task-oriented applications. You do not try to do everything - since you ignore everything - but concentrate on precisely the task/job you want to accomplish. Often such applications might look as hairy agglutinations of functions - and they are really functional and do what you want from them. Though lazy guys like I am would find them short on ergonomics ^_^