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whiteboard masturbation

A term sometimes used in certain software engineering circles to refer to the excessive use of things like object-oriented programming, specifically its principle of abstraction, to create highly abstract, polymorphic, incomprehensible and unnecessarily complex systems within software instead of keeping things simple.

This is usually practiced by "engineers" who value the "design" of software more than actually delivering value
to the software's users and/or believe that writing software is akin to designing a car or a building. Buildings, for example, cannot easily be torn down again if some part was constructed incorrectly or contains an error, whereas most software can.

While some may argue that it's prudent to keep one's code "clean" or "extendible" and whatnot, excessive abstraction can have the exact opposite effect: You get an unnecessarily complex mess that is extremely hard to untangle once you actually discover a use case which it didn't account for. The result is a "building" that cannot easily be rebuilt - said whiteboard masturbators will then argue, that "it should've just been designed better in the first place" and that the "model wasn't good enough" and will continue to draw UML diagrams that are of no use apart from impressing the sales department.

"Maybe we should use a visitor pattern to separate this strategy from the concrete adapter that is instantiated by our abstract factory so we can guarantee arbitrary observability throughout our proxied chain of responsibility."
"... listen, at this point it's just whiteboard masturbation. Just keep it simple and write a function."

by Aequitosh February 28, 2024


Whiteboardism

A pro-life, pro-LGBT religion founded in 2021 that centered around a sentient whiteboard that they believe to have created the universe

Are you a follower of Whiteboardism?

by NonsenseNamer September 28, 2021


Whiteboard Tornado Cup

A Japanese Country Band that emerged in late 2011. Their hit singles include "Lemonade Tears", "Punishment Pie", and "Cow Prophet Generator". They sound like a cross between Garth Brooks and Takkyu Ishino.

Young Lad: Have you listened to Whiteboard Tornado Cup?

Old Lad: Yeah man, it's like listening to Hello Kitty fighting Woody from Toystory.

by MuppetPastor November 6, 2011


Whiteboard

Hamkelasi's fandom

Stan hamkelasi Be a whiteboard

by Shab0_0 April 28, 2021


Whiteboard

The thing every Aussie kid wants to get a pice of when the teacher walks out of the room

Oh, the whiteboard

by lilyacob September 6, 2018


Whiteboard

A bored white person

I am a whiteboard

by PartyCrasher547 December 14, 2022


Drawing on the whiteboard

When you have a half baked turd hanging out your arse and you slide your cheeks along a female/males chest and leave a picture behind.

I was drawing on the whiteboard last night and left her with a Nike tick.

by Turf burger June 9, 2021