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Good post. I will add that I only find UML diagrams useful for documenting an architecture once it is stable. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I've never laid out an architecture that didn't change once the code started to speak. Often I just start coding and refactoring, and it's probably because software has to grow organically. Bottom-up and side-to-side are as much of that as top-down. The static analysis tool that I developed was written without any up-front design, just diving in and starting on a recursive descent parser.
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I agree to a point.
Rage wrote: Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
This is how it should be. In my professional experience it was sometimes the case that a software project would be designed appropriately for its size and the team situation. In many cases, it simply wasn't. People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death.
Is it as common as badly designed or simply undesigned software?
No.
Is it destructive and harmful to projects?
Yes!
I guess to sound cliche it's about moderation. You have to make the design appropriate for a project.
I'm not dismissing UML entirely either. But it's is one of those things that strikes as having the perception of being far more useful than it actually is.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: You have to make the design appropriate for a project
Agreed, and this exactly is what should be (also) taught in CS courses.
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honey wrote: People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death.
Wow. I guess the world has changed since I last had a salaried job, because I only saw this twice in over 20 years. The second time, I realized what would eventually happen, so I transferred to another group and built the appropriate subset of the same thing that a team of 30 or 40 were working on.
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I was a software architect and consultant working primarily in project rescue. I came across all kinds of trash fires.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time.
There are also people who religiously follow a template procedure for coding, irrespective of how the project is currently organised.
For example, in a project which uses OOP practices - so normally if you have a Widget id and want the Widget object, you'd call the static method Widget.Find(id) - I've worked with people who write an IWidgetFinder interface, then a WidgetFinder class with a constructor which takes a delegate function to handle errors; so when it's called you first instantiate the WidgetFinder with the error handler, then you can call WindgetFinder.Find(id)!
All this repeated for dozens of trivial functions with interfaces which are only ever going to be used by one class and classes that are only used from one place in the project with the same error handling that's used everywhere!
And, in this project, much of the time the end result comes down to an EF call like...
DBcontext.Widgets.Where(w => w.id == id).First();
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YES! This kind of thing. It's unnecessary. Code should be as simple as it can be and no simpler.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Thing is I hardly ever see development task that you could do and "not be bothered with higher level topics".
From my experience, you have vertical integration in the system from fronted to database and to implement a feature that is useful for a user you have to have insights in all those layers.
Of course there are some local fixes, but usually you affect some other part anyway. For most of other stuff you have to have insight what user will do, what business wants to achieve, what is general direction of a system architecture.
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Ever worked for embedded world (with multiple layer ofSW from different companies) or for DoD (where SW developer A does not know what the guy sitting next to him is coding for) ?
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I worked in a couple of places but maybe because I would not fit in "just code that, no questions asked" approach I am biased.
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Quote: I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it.
I would be very careful with the "3 would do it" part. SRP should always be respected otherwise you will get burned really bad sooner or later. I agree that overdesign is a waste of resources, yet underdesign tends to cause much more damage. If you design something with hundreds of entities and expect it to remain maintainable for 5+ years, initial investment into architecture pays off. Of course, if the architect is well familiar with both application architecture practices and the domain of the application.
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Niemand25 wrote: agree that overdesign is a waste of resources, yet underdesign tends to cause much more damage.
I'm not advocating for doing away with the design phase. I also think that while what you say is true, people are also taught this heavily, and I think they take too much to heart. Maybe that's what it is too? Maybe people get so afraid of a deathmarched project that they overengineer everything?
Real programmers use butterflies
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As you agreed in other post. Overdesign is rare if compare to underdesign. Which makes its impact quite low. At the moment I'm angry with myself as I one more time cut corners due to time pressure, disrespected SRP and now fixing my mess 
I guess the time pressure is the reason for underdevelopment and (for the most part) effectively prevents overdevelopment. Not that many developers have spare time to go to the jungle of abstractions and irrelevant use cases.
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Niemand25 wrote: Not that many developers have spare time to go to the jungle of abstractions and irrelevant use cases.
That's probably why I see so many offending projects posted at CP.  Rarer in the field sure, but when you have a pointy haired boss who just heard about UML at a conference and now wants to impose it on every project it can make it near impossible to make deadlines.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Bosses are ... well ... bosses 
Not the worst case, I met a head of DBA's in one international company who never heard of normal forms. Discussion between her and reporting team was marvellous. She couldn't understand why reporting team are so much displeased about xml in fields. It is so easy to parse, isn't it? 
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Hahaha whoops. Although in fairness, I *became* a DBA out of necessity because a lot of smaller shops I worked for in the late 90s and early aughts had nobody and no clue. I can respect having to learn on the job, but the key is to *learn* on the job.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: ust because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should.
I look at that the other way:
I don't know how to do something so I do it. That philosophy is, after all, what makes our world go round.*
Bitterness section - or perhaps just bitter-sweet:
Let the next generation sort it out instead of staring at their cell phones.
*like it or not - and thus giving you the answer to the great philospher's question "Why?"
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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honey the codewitch wrote: Keep It Simple Stupid.
The golden rule. 
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"Simplify, simplify" -- Thoreau
I totally agree, but I prefer to work alone anyway. I never begin with much of a plan, I simply begin and see where it goes.
Twice I recall being handed a "spec" for something I was to develop, but I ignored them and did what I knew was right -- one of the specs was actually dangerous.
Specs always come from people who have no idea what they're doing, but want to appear smarter than the people who do.
For one personal project, I made kind of a grid to track which features needed to be developed, which didn't, and which I had completed, but that's about it.
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(hence) Never use technical words for pictures.
Never tell customers, or developers, that the picture is UML - it's just a picture 
Guidance of the wise...
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It takes a certain talent to be able to code like that, and I respect it. Naturally I do, because I'm much the same way when left to my own devices.
It's useful to know architecture, UML and all of that mess just to be able to communicate with people who speak it, and I will concede that huge projects with large teams pretty much demand architecture and pre-planning but otherwise just let me at the code.
Real programmers use butterflies
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This is just as true for "frameworks". When was the last time a generic framework actually did what you wanted it to do?
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Yes. Although I'll grudgingly accept that for its size, Microsoft did a fair job with the .NET BCL
Real programmers use butterflies
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Well, a framework isn't supposed to do anything!
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