[geeks] Misuse of Java

[Jonathan C Patschke]

On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 10:52 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:

>   Well I can't say I agree fully with that point though, Jon...Many 
> programs suck mightily due to excessive "design".  Design isn't a 
> substitute for actually writing the code...While it should never be 
> slapped together haphazardly, there *is* such a thing as "too much 
> design", and many "professional" programmers do it routinely.

I think we should agree to disagree on that point.  I'm probably one of 
those over-designers.  Typically, I have more documentation[1] than 
code, and have volumes of design documents on code that I never got 
around to writing.  However, if I ever get bored (Ha!), all I have to 
do is grep for a project.  If I'd written code instead of docs, I'd 
first have to wrap my brain around the code, and then jog my memory to 
see if I could remember where I was taking it.  As it is, the 
hard-to-remember stuff is there, and the code should just be a 
translation of the docs.

However, I have yet to see code that sucks because too much thought was 
put into the design.  I've seen plenty of code that sucks because 
someone decided that the design of the code should be "pretty", which 
usually means "way, way more generic than the code could ever be 
reasonably expected to handle".  This isn't "too much design"; it's 
just "stupid design".  There's a really good parable that illustrates 
this mindset:  http://www.qis.net/~jimjr/eng01.htm

>   I would suggest reading up on a philosophy known as "extreme 
> programming" (actually I'll be surprised if you don't already know 
> about it)...its proponents say very interesting and thought-provoking 
> things on this subject.

If this is the same philosophy that ties to people to the same 
keyboard, then I've had to suffer through three semesters of that 
nonsense at Rice.  I'm one of those ancient people that believes 
communication problems can be resolved by adhering -stridently- to 
whatever specifications/interfaces the programming team agrees upon.


[1] I'm sure that, having been on five or so of the same lists that I'm 
on, you'd -never- -believe- that I could be wordy.

--
Jonathan C. Patschke
Celestrion Information Systems
Thorndale, TX