A few weeks ago I stumbled on an article about clutter. Apparently hoarding is now considered a psychiatric disorder. I wonder what took so long to come to that conclusion.
The article referenced the DSM-5, released in 2013:
hoarding, is now a distinct psychiatric disorder,
defined in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 as “persistent difficulty discarding possessions, regardless of their value”
such that living areas cannot be used.
Of course we all have a family member that suffers from hoarding or is close to it. We dread the day they pass and we’re stuck cleaning out their house.
Humor aside, what piqued my interest was how this relates to hoarding features in software. Everyone of us is plagued by software containing so many features we hardly even know about ten percent of what the software can do. Of the ten percent, we only find about half of it useful on a daily basis. Who knows what else is in the other ninety percent, perhaps something worthwhile?
Swapping out a few words, this is really what I read, when I read that article:
hoarding features, is now a distinct psychiatric disorder,
defined in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 as “persistent difficulty discarding features, regardless of their value”
such that valuable features cannot be found.
Or perhaps before the features are actualized
hoarding ideas, is now a distinct psychiatric disorder,
defined in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 as “persistent difficulty discarding ideas for features, regardless of their value”
such that valuable ideas cannot be found.