Cristian Benedit

We need a certain amount of clutter to have an enjoyable house, and to feel relaxed when we're at home.

On the other side, we can't live easily in a house that is so overrun with clutter and stuff that it's mostly unusable. This is hoarding.

Most of our codebases are hoarded. But most of our object-oriented advice is a staged house. What we need is something in the middle.

If you watch the show Hoarders you'll notice that almost all the houses they clean out contain huge piles of "simple living"-type magazines.

It's not that these folks don't want to be clean - they love to look at these staged, organized homes. But they don't know how to get there.

Every office has shelves (or dropbox folders) full of software design books. We love to imagine living in these beautiful, simple places.

But in reality, both the staged house and the example codebase are unattainable in real life, and even if attained, unlivable.

What you want, in both cases, is something in the middle: enough clutter to be comfortable, with enough space to be flexible.