Premature Abstraction
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
Creating abstractions, interfaces, or generalized solutions before understanding the actual requirements — the flip side of premature optimization. Often results in wrong abstractions that are harder to change than duplicated code. The 'Rule of Three' suggests waiting until you see three similar cases before abstracting.
In plain English: Making code 'flexible' and 'reusable' before you know what you actually need, usually making things worse.
Example: "He built a generic EventProcessor<T> framework before writing a single event handler — premature abstraction at its finest."