How can you avoid overengineering your code with YAGNI?

To avoid overengineering with YAGNI, you should focus on immediate needs by addressing current requirements with the simplest solutions. Embrace iterative development, starting with a minimal viable product (MVP) and add more features incrementally based on feedback. You need to refactor code as needed to accommodate new requirements, avoiding speculative generalization or unnecessary abstractions. We need to make sure that the designs are simple and clear, applying complexity only to solve real and immediate problems. Regularly review and reassess the codebase to eliminate unnecessary complexity and stay agile, responding efficiently to evolving project goals while minimizing the risk of overengineering.

Identifying over engineering in the use of design patterns involves recognising when solutions introduce undue complexity without proportional benefits. Over engineering is often evident when a design pattern complicates code readability or usability, is implemented based on speculative future needs rather than current requirements, or leads to premature optimization for scalability issues that haven't yet emerged.

Thinking in terms of first pricnciples can help avoid over engineering with design patterns. What often happens is an artificial attempt to fit a problem to a known design pattern while the problem does not fit well in it. This ,over course of time, restrict scaling and maintaining the application

YAGNI - You Ain't Gonna Need It, is neither a pattern nor a design principle. It is simply an approach that different teams follow while doing Business Analysis for a product or while designing Object Models / Class Diagrams. While Identifying the Object relations and Patterns in the code, we can refer to this approach to avoid using Design Patterns that are not relevant. Sometimes, Architects tend to use the Design Patterns to showoff their skills even if the Design Pattern is not made for the problem being solved (Cargo-Cult). The code should be kept loosely coupled and there are other Design Principles which can be used at several places.

YAGNI, which stands for "You Aren't Gonna Need It", is a principle in software development that emphasizes avoiding implementing functionality until it is necessary. This approach helps prevent over-engineering, which can complicate and bloat software projects unnecessarily. When applying YAGNI alongside design patterns, the goal is to ensure that the use of these patterns is justified by current requirements, not by anticipated future needs. 1. Start Simple 2. Incremental Refactoring 3. Evaluate Each Pattern’s Necessity 4. Use Design Patterns for Refactoring 5. Balance YAGNI with Code Quality

Balance is quite necessary while designing a system or while maintaining one. As we know YAGNI stands for You Ain't Gonna Need It, simply that do not over-engineer and add too many unnecessary features at once. While Design pattern is a way of resolving a particular problem efficiently and based on a specific use-case. They might seem contradictory but they are not. We need to understand what we need to build based on the use-cases and requirements and for the given timelines. We need to apply only applicable design patterns for the current timelines. For instance, the system does not support threads but we over-engineered to add Singleton pattern just to make it thread-safe while it was not needed at the current point of time.

We should look at the should have, must have and good to have features for each delivery cycles and see where we apply design patterns and where we can avoid doing over-engineering and add many extra features. There would be some systems which have different use cases with non negotiables where we have to over-engineer and provide extra thought on applying design patterns. Like, in finance domain we need to have extra consideration towards robustness of system, efficiency, performance and security where on each step we need to be extra careful and apply design pattern needed.