Feature Constipation.
Aka, when a program gets to a certain point, and it’s
no longer possible to add features because everything
is at a point where it is about to be rewritten or
changed, or refactored.
Since one of the few things I actually like about
programming is being able to add new features, it
really annoys me when a project gets to this point.
Most of my work projects are at this point.
gimp has been at this stage for about 5 years.
It is very frustrating. Anything you want to
add or change is potentially obsoleted. With
OSS projects this can be particularly annoying
because very often, that big rewrite never ever
happens.
If I were a real programmer, I’d love the idea
of rewriting or heavily refactoring something to
make it “cleaner”. But I don’t like it. I do
it, but I don’t like doing it. Pulling teeth.
And of course, on the few occasions where I do
want to refactor something, I get about 70%
done and then suddenly, I have to add some
complicated new feature or bug fix immediately.
The only sane thing to do at that point is
to backport the fixes or features to the
stable branches. Grumble.