The One Ring

Overview

The One Ring is, in The Lord of the Rings, a ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron to rule all other rings and, through them, to dominate Middle-earth. It is, by any functional measure, an extraordinary piece of engineering. It is also, by any moral measure, a catastrophe.^[1]

The Software Parallel

In the wiki's view, the One Ring is the archetypal over-ambitious general-purpose tool. It does many things. It is powerful. It is beautifully crafted. And it subtly — then not so subtly — corrupts everything that tries to use it.

Signs that you are building a One Ring:

• The tool is designed to replace all of the other tools.
• The tool's scope has expanded every week since inception.
• The tool's author believes people who disagree about the tool "just don't understand yet."
• The tool requires its own dedicated documentation team.
• People have started using the tool's name as a verb.

The cure is usually the same: break it up, confine the scope, and — if necessary — throw it into a volcano.

Burbridge's Position

"If a single library is solving everyone's problem, someone's problem is being solved badly." — Burbridge, in a design review

References