Software Reality

Frameworks and the Danger of a Grand Design

In my new (more or less monthly) piece at Reg Developer, I talk about the "growing pains" that we all, as developers, tend to go through. It's the well-meaning Grand Design Syndrome, in which a developer  sees a coding problem, any coding problem, as justification to set out writing a reusable, pluggable framework. The framework "might" come in handy one day, so it has to be worth doing, right??

From the article:

"Luckily this mindset is easy to spot. Your team members will be busy creating a beautiful but over-designed system with enums, annotations, closures and all the latest language features, loosely coupled classes and several hundred pluggable frameworks when a well-placed isThisTheRightValue() method would probably have sufficed. Picture a pluggable framework that only ever has one plug."

Several commenters have questioned the part where I suggest that you probably don't want to be writing a framework at all (or even seeking out a third-party one, for that matter).

Seriously? No frameworks ever??

Not really what I meant. It's an Occam's Razor thing. In other words (applied to software design and frameworks), use something as complex and difficult to maintain as a framework if the potential for reuse is huge and obvious; otherwise, just code to the metal.

Of course, the decision of whether to write (or add in) a framework is a big one, and shouldn't be made by a junior programmer coding up one dark corner of the system (someone going through difficult growing pains), which is really the point.

“Mom, Java’s stopped working again!” (At least until we get Closures)

I can imagine this cry continually being shouted out in back bedrooms, cube farms and open-plan agile pigpens alike. Every couple of years or so, a new feature is mooted that will enhance the Java language, ostensibly to make it more “modern” and keep it competitive with the likes of C#, Ruby, and even (who woulda thought?) JavaScript.

As soon as the proposed new feature appears on the horizon, excitement bubbles up. Arguments break out on community hubs such as JavaLobby and TSS, where developers swear blind that they can’t possibly be an effective Java programmer without the new feature – in whatever form it ends up taking. (Okay that’s a slight exaggeration, but reading some of the threads, it does feel that way!)

Big Brother is Watching the Trees, No Wood Found Yet

Another well thought out plan from NuLabour. According to several sources, the government is mulling over the idea of a central database of all UK communications data. This would include times and durations of phone calls, plus emails and net access for all UK citizens.

The wording is hazy and the details scant, but it should be noted that (especially with phone calls) there’s no talk of recording the content, just times, and senders/recipients. Of course even this is pretty damned intrusive, and is a chilling piece of insight into how far such a government would be likely to go if the technology (or its ability to adequately specify such technology) allowed it.

Luckily, it’s highly unlikely that such a mammoth project could ever get off the ground. Given that the government couldn't even set up a gun database with a few thousand names on it, I can't see how the scheme could ever possibly work, or be useful even if it did work. There are one or two technical hurdles to overcome, to put it mildly.

Where's the True 3D Desktop? (And Compiz Fusion doesn't count)

“Wars aren’t real, anyway.” He runs his finger up the front of his flak jacket, sealing it shut with a flatulent hiss. “They’re either made-up, or they happen to other people.”

He dives off the front of the building, doing his best Silver Surfer impression, and swoops down to ground level. He idles for a moment, searching for the right application; then he laughs at his own stupidity and remembers that this is all one seamless ecosystem of capabilities. He’s still accustomed to the Windows world and the faux-3D desktops that horribly missed the point of adding a third dimension to a perfectly good GUI.

He remembers the lecture in Ancient History class: first there was the command-line. Write it down. Think of the command-line as the first dimension: it’s linear. Then the graphical user desktop, the aptly-named WIMP, brought us the second dimension: the ability to arrange icons in two planes, across and down. Point and click brought users closer to their data. Just reach out and touch your file...

So if we are to have a 3D desktop, what fundamental new thing does the third dimension give us?