I’m essentially a believer in You Aren’t Gonna Need It — the principle that you should add features to your software — including generality and abstraction — when it becomes clear that you need them, and not before.
However, there are some things which really are easier to do earlier than later, and where natural tendencies or a ruthless application of YAGNI might neglect them.
Source: YAGNI exceptions, an article by Luke Plant.
YAGNI—You Ain’t Gonna Need It—is a rule that says you shouldn’t add a feature just because it might be useful in the future—only write code when it solves a direct problem.
When should you over-ride YAGNI? When the cost of adding something later is so dramatically expensive compared with the cost of adding it early on that it’s worth taking the risk. On when you know from experience that an initial investment will pay off many times over.
Source: PAGNIs: Probably Are Gonna Need Its, an article by Simon Willison.
As you embark on a design, build, or specification, it is important you, the stakeholders, and the team understand what you are producing and why. When you say pop-up, which one of the following terms or concepts do you mean? What about your client? Your designer? Your developer? The user (who calls the help line)? The screen reader? The voice control software?
Source: Stop Using ‘Pop-up’, an article by Adrian Roselli.