Over-engineering is the art of taking something and making it more complex, more intricate, and more unnecessarily complicated. It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole using nothing but a sledgehammer.
We're talking about the kind of complexity that's more like a disease, a plague that infects otherwise good ideas and turns them into convoluted, Byzantine monstrosities.
Here's an example:
To get to the nearest coffee shop, you need to:
- Take a left turn at the next intersection.
- Proceed 3.7 miles down a winding road.
- Make a sharp right turn onto a one-way street going the opposite direction of the original road.
- Drive 4.2 miles on a road that only exists on Google Maps.
- Arrive at the coffee shop, only to find it's been converted into a used bookstore.
This is over-engineering at its finest.
But don't just take our word for it. Here's some requirements for over-engineering, just in case you want to join in on the fun: