Feature Creep

15-09-2009

Feature Creep is a tech head term, defined by programmers working on projects. It can be summed up pretty simply for non-tech heads using the following:

While working on a project that has a set number of code goals to hit, new features will be suggested during the creation stage of the project and thus be implemented also. As oppose to all features being clearly defined at the design stage of the project.

I am a big sufferer of this little problem when it comes to The Bauble. Mainly because the site is my own little coding excercise. I like to try out new things, keep my coding skills sharp and my design skills fresh. So new features are constantly being added and pushed to the live site way past the design stage of things.

Most of the time because the idea was a good one that I didn't have during the design stage of things.

Like the new feature pushed late last night. It was suggested to me that a handy little feature to have would be an email notification when somebody comments on an entry that has comments already on it.

This feature can be done in a number of ways.

First and foremost there is a requirement that the person leaving a comment submits an email address, so they can be notified of other comments left. That in itself is easy, but the way of doing this is a little on the tricky side.

Firstly, do I enforce some sort of login system? Make users visiting the site be required to create a login account so that they can even leave one comment, let alone many comments, thus locking their email address into the depths of the website along with a user name?

Oddly enough, I didn't like the sound of this approach. Neither does the blogsphere as a whole as it happens. The general view is that a user should be able to visit a blog, leave a comment, and then go away. No registration should be required to leave the comment, allowing for the good old "man behind the safety of his monitor" method of posting comments.

Second option is that when a users posts a comment they submit their email address as well. This is a little better I reckon, in fact so much better it is the way I went about doing it. Basically it is a lot less work, less overhead. I don't have to worry about user accounts and all that lark, while at the same time retaining a large level of "drop by, drop a comment" for the user.

So, announcing the new feature. When you comment on a rant or chronicle you can leave your email address along as well (it's optional, not required at all and will not be used for anything other than comment notification). This needs to be done only once per entry (so if you comment multiple times on an entry you don't need to add your email every time, just the once will do). It also means that since your email is only tagged with one entry at a time, you won't get spammed with loads of emails about comments being left. Only the entries you felt the need to keep tabs on will notify you, other ones will not.

As per usual their is no doubt a bug in the code somewhere that I missed during my testing. Or I will decide to modify something about the feature later on because I come up with a better way to do it, but it's there for now so anybody that feels like playing away with it please do.

In other news: What is the deal with Kanye West? Is it just me or does his levels of racism keep growing and growing every year. That guy really just pushes all my buttons that make a person a complete douchebag. His latest little racist stunt (and let's be very clear here, everything that man does or says is racist. I am not going to not call him racist because of his skin colour. Racism is racism, it's a two way street.) was just God awful. I don't even know any of the work by Ms. Swift but talk about having your moment in the sun ruined.

What is worse is the way the media are handling it. You reverse that situation, replace all the dark skinned people with white and vice versa, and the media headlines would all read "Racist remarks made by....". But just because Kayne is a little on the dark side of the skin pigmentation they aren't calling him racist for fear of them then being called racist.

He is racist, simple as. The man doesn't like white people. That's racist. If Jackie Chan didn't like black people he would be racist, if he didn't like white people he would be racist. That's the very simple fact of the entire matter. Just because Kayne is a cool black man that can rap doesn't somehow negate that he is being racist, it's just the media being too chicken shit to call it what it is.

The extremely annoying thing of course being that we are all one bloody race, human. We just have different colours, a bit of diversity, but still there are some people out there that seem to think that colour defines race and that you can get away with treating people however you want if you don't have matching skin colour.

Never was a big fan of John Lennon, but sometimes "Imagine" really does highlight a great level of stupidity in the world.

Blue_jester

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