09 November 2013

The Human Pretzel Factory

Never been a big fan of Agile, which should come as no surprise, since any relationalist subscribes to the notion that one needs first decide on the nature of persistent data. There are lots of tools for schema migration these days, so don't give me any shit about that. Changing schema is no more difficult than changing code. And, lest we forget, an Organic Normal Form™ schema is the constraints of record, and thus can be used to generate client side code. Lots of folks use xml monsters to do just that.

So, I came across this piece, via Artima. There's a link to the prequel in the piece.

As he concludes, there is no silver bullet. Well, there is, it just isn't some codified process. Carpenters live by it: "measure twice, cut once". The whole agile thing asserted that it isn't possible to understand an application a priori, so don't bother and just code sling until the cows come home. Eventually, if you don't wear out your debugger in the process, you'll get something to work. It should come as no surprise that healthcare.gov got built this way. Here's the autopsy. For the record: the previous sentence's contents, I just discovered, while the one next previous I just winged it: seemed obvious given the Kiddie Koders who've been the public facing talking heads.

Measure twice, cut once. Repeat until you understand that.

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