What has been described as “creeping elegance” is probably better described as “feature blight,” for like a fungus on a plant it gradually elaborates and blurs the true outline of the product while it drains its sap. The antidote to feature blight is, of course, the “constricting deadline.” This results in features being discarded in proportion to the time it would take to implement them. It is often the case that the most useful features take the longest to implement. Thus the combination of the blight and the deadline yields software as we know and love it, comprised of bountiful quantities of useless features. – Jef Raskin

(As quoted in the excellent book Getting Real by 37 Signals.)