@Aaron said:I really can't see how being reluctant to mess up a good design in order to implement some ridiculous probably-will-never-be-used feature right now instead of extending the design to accommodate it has anything to do with an unwillingness to put some information into spare bits.  The guy just didn't understand what "spare" meant. You are definitely right about that, he just didn't know what spare meant. I heard my colleague (a very experienced guy) complain later on that this dinosaur had been responsible for messing up his complete module design and now they were stuck with it. I always wonder then how it can get that far, where actually incompetent people can stay so long on the job and get that much responsibilities. I think I know the answers by now, 10 years later. Fortunately he got retired 2 years later with some massive cost savingsafter y2k.