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'Function creep' is a pretty common term in programming; what about 'class creep'? I've been getting into C# recently, and while working on one of my projects I realized I could redo it all with a much more abstracted design. When I tried this the first time, all seemed to be going well, and then one day I looked at my Object Browser and...yikes!! Things were getting way too complex and inconsistent.

Thoughts on this? Am I just a bad programmer?

Yes, this is a common problem particularly for programmers who are new to inheritance and the principles of object-oriented programming. You used to see this a lot in class libraries: immature ones tend to be deep and narrow; they become flatter and wider as their programmers gain experience. They're less elegant but ultimately far more useful. Even commercial class libraries like MFC suffered from this early on. It can be even worse with C++, where multiple inheritance tempts the architect into erecting an entire unwieldy forest of abstract classes.

I guy I used to work with called this disease "abstractionism"; he likened it to a situation where you call an electrician to rewire your house and he starts with Maxwell's Equations, or a plumber begins work in your bathroom by imagining a pipe capable of carrying any kind of fluid at any pressure, or a guy designing umbrellas first goes to work modeling the atmosphere.

I may be stating the obvious here, but I think the extreme abstractionism comes from computer science professors. All CS students are taught to be abstract, but I think in many cases, the professors go too far because they don't have enough real-world experience to know what they're talking about.