The Cost Yagni Was Never About – By Kent Beck

Kent Beck clarifies that YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It) is not about saving effort on coding, but rather about the timing of building speculative structure. He identifies two distinct costs of building features too early: the loss of optionality (when you commit to a guess before having full information, you often build the wrong structure) and net present value (paying costs today for returns that arrive later). Beck argues that waiting to build structure until it's actually needed is a strategic asset, not laziness.