[throwawayscrapd]

I mean given that you've had this problem repeatedly, I'd call it "past-proofing", but I suppose you know your codebase better than I do.

[rectang]

There’s always a balance to be struck when avoiding premature consolidation of repeated code. We all face the same issue as osigurdson at some point and the productive responses fall in a range.

[osigurdson]

If you have some idea of what future changes may be seen, it is fine to design for that. However, it is impossible to design a codebase to handle any change. Realistically, just doing the absolute bare minimum is probably the best defence in that situation.