Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The more features you add

lukew.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 35 posts

Re: The more features you add

#11

Post by throw310822 »

x86x87 wrote: post #7
throw310822 wrote: post #6

Aside the fact that more features means more time spent supporting them- is it actually true that too many features degrade the product because it becomes too complicated? I disagree. A good interface organisation can hide the most complex features from most users. The lack of a feature might force users to use a different product; but if the software is confusing, or bloated, this is a problem with its how it's orga…

in case of bloat most features are not used. you spend almost all your time and attention maintaining shit nobody cares about

I usually think of bloated software as sw with features that are ill-conceived, either because they've been thrown in by some clueless pm, or because they're not really meant to help the user but only to generate a profit for the company, or to justify the existence of a team. If that's the case, it's not much the number of features per se, it's how they've been designed and implemented.

Re: The more features you add

#14

Post by eloisant »

SoftTalker wrote: post #13

Joel Spolsky wrote years ago that nothing generated new sales of his software more than releasing a new version with more features. That's hard for a business to turn down.

Joel Spolsky was in the business of selling versions of his software. A lot of businesses nowadays are selling subscriptions to saas software, and the sales dynamic is very different.

Re: The more features you add

#16

Post by bsdpufferfish »

throw310822 wrote: post #6

Aside the fact that more features means more time spent supporting them- is it actually true that too many features degrade the product because it becomes too complicated? I disagree. A good interface organisation can hide the most complex features from most users. The lack of a feature might force users to use a different product; but if the software is confusing, or bloated, this is a problem with its how it's orga…

The cost of a change is proportional to how many things it touches.

Re: The more features you add

#17

Post by amatecha »

throw310822 wrote: post #6

Aside the fact that more features means more time spent supporting them- is it actually true that too many features degrade the product because it becomes too complicated? I disagree. A good interface organisation can hide the most complex features from most users. The lack of a feature might force users to use a different product; but if the software is confusing, or bloated, this is a problem with its how it's orga…

In my experience/opinion, most software companies don't spend the time/effort to properly integrate new features in a cohesive way that makes them "intuitively" discoverable while avoiding complicating what was already there. The product becomes degraded because no one spends the amount of effort needed to cleanly integrate a new feature which changes the model of how a person interacts with the software. Instead it's usually just tacked on, shoved in somewhere that it kinda fits. New button, menu item, toolbar tool, whatever. More stuff.

Re: The more features you add

#18

Post by pydry »

eikenberry wrote: post #15
eschneider wrote: post #3

It's true that any app that lives long enough reaches an "optimum" version and then goes downhill from there. For Microsoft Word, for instance, the optimum, or "Elvis" version was "v5.1 for Mac".

Perl v4 would be another good example.

Ubuntu 10.04

Re: The more features you add

#19

Post by yarg »

11235813213455 wrote: post #9

the more bugs

Well that all depends on how well the features are integrated.

Often times a new feature is similar from the API perspective to pre-existing ones.

If that's the case either integration is simple, or you need to refactor the underlying API (which means that when you eventually get around to implementing the feature it (and similar future features) will integrate cleanly).

Post reply on HN