The KOMPLIKHAYTA (Anonymous)

This week at work has been spent tracking down and profiling some software I''ve been maintaining for a few months. Why? Because the original author was "A Komplikhayta". What does this odd term mean? Read it back. Yes. The scourge of the software development world - the coder who can make even the simple eternally complicated.

These people probably exist in all walks of life. They are people to be distrusted, avoided. However, they are also people who need schooling. It is my experience that truly great people boil a problem down to it's simplest level and solve it from there. Of course, not all problems are simple. However, the Komplikhayta could not be let near a complex problem because they would turn it in to an impossible problem. There is a large movement within software development circles lead by the XP people striving for simplicity and openness, but the Komplikhayta detests this. The Komplikhayta likes bespoke solutions, hand-crafted (by themselves of course) and regards pretty much everything else written as inferior. This superiority complex drives them to produce more outlandish, complicated solutions to the very simple. The Komplikhayta likes complex. It keeps him employed.

Can anyone give me examples of The Komplikhayta in other circles? Do they exist? Are they always wrong? Comments please...

Oh, and the bizarre spelling is courtesy of an MSN convo between Kenshi and myself. It started as complicatah in true Wu-Tang stylee, and descended from there. I believe the final masterstroke was mine, managing to get HATER in there, albeit spelled wrongly. Sorry.