BigBallOfMud

A DesignPattern representing large, rampant, organic, uncontrolled growth.

Described here :http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html

Picks up on the OrganicArchitecture / HowBuildingsLearn connection (even shanty towns as in OnFavelas)

Only dung-beetles really consume big balls of mud

See also the myth of ThePerfectRewrite, PushButtonProductivity

A quote which gets at what I'm wondering in DoesAbstractionScale?

However, sometime the anticipated contingencies never arise, and the designer and implementers wind up having wasted effort solving a problem that no one has ever actually had. Other times, not only is the anticipated problem never encountered, its solution introduces complexity in a part of the system that turns out to need to evolve in another direction. In such cases, speculative complexity can be an unnecessary obstacle to subsequent adaptation. It is ironic that the impulse towards elegance can be an unintended source of complexity and clutter instead.

See also OrganicArchitecture, ReFactoring, EmergentDesign

CategoryDesign, CategoryComputerScience, CategorySoftware