Ramblings

One of the manifestos from ChangeThis this month is about Mini Sagas.  The author, Rajesh Setty presents the idea that writing mini sagas, which contain exactly 50 words, expands your creativity — following on the idea that Creativity Loves Constraints. Typically the mini saga expresses some sort of message or value — I think in [...]

In the quest for simplicity and maintainability, sometimes we need to add components.  It seems counter intuitive, perhaps, but sometimes it’s true.
As an example, I once came across a project which had multiple queries, each of which contained over 40 lines of SQL code.  I don’t know about you, but 40 lines of code for [...]

I’ve done it.  I’ve been guilty of ooh shiny development.  You know, those projects where you use the latest and greatest library, tool, or infrastructure not because it’s the best thing to do but because it’s the cool thing to do.

I was just speaking with a coworker about JEP. In the course of our conversation I realized that in my list of the foundations of JEP, I had left off what is perhaps the most important one of all — Pragmatism. If I were to sum up and explain JEP in one word [...]

“If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices.” — Thomas Aquinas
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo DaVinci
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a [...]

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. — Hans Hoffmann
A little while ago I’d come up with the following as a semi-serious description of Just Enough Programming:
Are you tired of over architected applications?  Does infinite scalability imply infinite development time?  Are you surrounded by applications whose sole [...]

I’ve been giving a lot of thought over the past months to the idea of “Just Enough Programming”.  Agile manufacturing has led to Just In Time manufacturing.  We also have Just In Time compilers.  But I’ve seen far too many times where application architectures have been far too complex — where things are done, not [...]