[common]
1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more
chrome and features onto
systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when
originally designed. See also feeping creaturism.
You know, the main problem with BSD Unix has
always been creeping featurism.
2. More generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become
even more complicated because people keep saying Gee, it would be
even better if it had this feature too
. (See
feature.) The result is usually a patchwork because
it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is
a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help
someone ... and then another ... and another....
When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. The GNU
hello program, intended to illustrate GNU
command-line switch and coding conventions, is also a wonderful parody of
creeping featurism; the distribution changelog is particularly funny.
Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also
be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A
similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see
second-system effect. See also
creeping elegance.