Just finished reading a nice article by Fank Buschmann, one of the authors of Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture called Unusable Software is Useless, Part 2.
The conclusion of the article gave words to a feeling I had when managing a software team a couple of years ago and my brightest programmer produced a brilliant solution to a problem we had in the system, only that he was the only person in the team who knew how to implement it correctly (worse yet, he was the only one that understood the solution excluding me). The problem was that he was to leave the team in a couple of months and this new “patch” would become a black box in the system. Buschmann states that “a less optimal but sufficient solution that a team can implement correctly is always better than a smart solution whose implementation requires skills not available in the team” (emphasis mine).
Just another instance of the KISS principle in disguise.
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