Aji Keshi

I found this term on a wiki devoted to programming issues and terminology. The wiki itself is a delicious collection of both technical and cultural terms.

Aji Keshi is a Japanese term which means roughly "discarding potential". It derives from strategies in the game of Go (which I don't play, but I tried to learn once).

AjiKeshi is when B makes a move that eliminates the aji of the stone without taking full advantage of the two above possibilities. Inexperienced players are uncomfortable with the instability of the board. They prefer to play a locally advantageous forcing move so that W will capture, because it eliminates an uncertainty in a game that often seems just too damned full of uncertainties.

Experienced players, on the other hand, see the aji and let it sit, for as long as possible. (Sometimes they'll even consciously manipulate the flow of the game so as to make a small aji into a large one, knowing that ultimately they'll be able to reap the benefits using one of the two options above.)

Go masters teach that AjiKeshi is a bad thing. Eliminating the aji seems good, because it simplifies, it reduces uncertainty and instability. But when we eliminate aji, we sacrifice future gains to present fears.

This really strikes home with some of the complex design issues I deal with at work. It is too easy to try to design the system to be all things for all foreseeable purposes, and yet sometimes it is important not to make a decision, because that decision may eliminate future flexibility, or paint us into a corner which future needs may require us to work our way out of.

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