Musings from The Software Underground

There's a great post by Brent Simmons (he's had a few good ones lately actually) about the thought process and decision making that goes into adding even what, to the average user, would appear to be a simple feature:

I recently added a pretty easy feature to NetNewsWire — a Send to Instapaper command. (It will appear in 3.2.)

It really is just a quick http call to the Instapaper server to add a URL to the Read Later list.

Piece of cake.

But of course it’s not as simple as just writing a quick script. It’s tempting to think that adding a feature like this is just about adding the functionality — but there’s a bunch more to it than that...

It’s not enough just to write the basic functionality and add a menu item that runs it. Even a feature as simple as this one requires some up-front thinking, some design.

Anatomy of a feature

There's a good follow-up post by Daniel over at Red Sweater too.

Funny Brent should post about this very subject. I just finished going through something similar for MacGourmet 3. I'm revamping the ingredients list in the editor to be an outline instead of the existing table. Sounds simple, right? Wow, it wasn't. Sometimes adding or redoing a feature, even when planned, has unexpected consequences that must be dealt with, and hours later, when you've finished, you realize it turned out to be a much bigger change than expected, even though you thought you knew exactly what needed to be done.

Brent's post gives a good example of just how much thought must go into even what appears to be, on the surface, an easy change. I was actually thinking of doing a similar post. I don't have to now, read Brent's post instead, he pretty much hits the nail on the head...