So a friend and I were talking about specific CABs, and containers, and DI, and MVP, and AOP/Cross-cutting injection, when I stopped and had to laugh. It reminded me of this post: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431.12
At this point, some of you may be saying, "But Rob... OK, so a lot of these 'frameworks' are getting out of hand, but haven't you posted previously about how most modern software is completely unmaintainable without frameworks?" Yep, guilty as charged. However, to quote Einstein: "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler." And this gets to the crux of this year's push for me - how to convey that there are two equally horrible extremes we need to avoid: being so simple that it's too simplistic to work correctly, consistantly, predictably and be maintainable, and being so complicated that it borders ridiculousness, just because someone slapped a "Best Practice" sticker on it. Unfortunately, the tool needed to make those distinctions is not found in a book, blog, or manual - it's found between your ears, where it for some reason appears to be more difficult to locate. And before anyone gets overly defensive, the point of the post is not to say that the things I mentioned up top are bad - in fact, they are far from it. Just saying that before you download and start figuring out how to use someone's ShineyNewFramework(tm) v2.5, make sure you know why you are using it, and don't just do it because someone's blog said you ought to.
posted @ Friday, February 08, 2008 6:30 PM