Abstract things that annoy me

[simont]

The sentiment ‘it's not much to ask’, presented as the sole justification of why people should do something you want. When everybody has a ‘not much to ask’ request and they're all different (or, occasionally, when the same person thinks of a different one every week for a year), they add up until collectively they are a lot to ask – so some of them have to go unfulfilled, despite each of them individually being so small that the asker couldn't imagine how anyone might have a good reason not to do it.

Don't just point out that the cost is low and leave it at that. Show why the benefit (whether to you, to whoever you're asking for it, or to somebody else) outweighs it!

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm... Cake :)

I assume you remember Mark Dominus' rather more detailed rant on about the same point, when he talked about small changes that had obvious small advantages, but hidden, aggregate disadvantages, that did seem sensible to make, but he resisted.

[simont]

I can't bring it to mind, actually. It might have been before I started reading his blog, possibly?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I can't find a link now. At at least one point I read through the archives so I've read it all by now :) As I recall, he was talking about maintaining a simple PERL module or similar and people kept saying "why don't you just add this bit of functionality, look it's easy I'll do it" and in that or another post, also mentioned the difficulty of maintaining some documentation with a similar "look, i'll just add tthis bit, it'll be useful" problem, where each individual request is reasonable, but in aggregate makes the module so unweildy no-one wants to bother ot use it.