"The management question here, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only question is whether to plan in advance to build and throw away, or to promise to deliver the throwaway to customers. Seen this way. the answer is much clearer. Delivering that throwaway to customers buys time, but it does so only at the cost of agony for the user, distraction for the builders while they do the redesign and a bad reputation for the product that the best redesign will find hard to live down.

Hence, plan to throw one away: You will, anyhow."

--Fred Brooks, giving the most ignored advice in history

What is the term for something that is so hilariously over-engineered that it actually becomes *substantially worse* at the task (not to mention completely impossible to maintain)?

Asking for a friend.

That friend is me.