Alex Galvis
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2021–2026
4:13 · 8.6M views · Apr 3, 2017
A short clip of the Simpsons episode in which Homer designs a car with absurd requirements, used here as a lesson in project requirements and scope.
Used purely as a joke reference to scope creep and feature-bloated design.
4 comments from Hacker News
If the internet historians are to be believed, Longhorn was pretty innovative for its time because Microsoft gave their devs free reign and let them go crazy with it to put all their ideas into the new OS which was cool for show but apparently became "the car Homer Simpson designed"[1], being plagued by endless cost overruns, deadlines missed and a release date with no end in sight, and a codebase nobody could prune to turn into a solid shippable product, forcing Microsoft to scrap it completely and start over from scratch to create Vista in a ungodly short amount of time to ship something to replace the now ageing Windows XP, as what was supposed to be Longhorn was schedules to release just 1-2 years after XP but due to the fiasco the development of Longhorn, Vista launched a whopping 6 years after XP, which was an eternity in tech back then. [1] this video
This makes me think of "The homer" from the Simpsons[1]. The scope creep is insane. But in this case, I think I may be homer. I may buy this, and feel like a glutton for doing so. Living in Japan I've avoided Flipper Zero due to the law basically saying "It is illegal to own tools primarily used for crime" (think lockpicks, etc). With Flipper Zero primarily being a RFID hacking tool, you are one officer knowing what it is and considering it a tool for crime away from being locked up - at least for the 21 days they get while they investigate you. Now Flipper One seems like something probably legal. [1]: this video
The picture of the guy with his handdrawn "dream phone" is quite charming. Sort of a Homerphone, but it is drawn well. [LINK] "Sir, please, a QWERTY keyboard would be so much -" "No." Homerphone reference: this video
> Ad hoc, it would be The Homer of programming languages if allowed to grow unfettered. For those who don't get the reference: this video