Category Archive: Just Enough Programming

Sep 30

From the vaults…. on Parentheses

To paren, or not to paren: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The bugs and errors of maintenance programs, Or to take arms against a host of typos, And by debugging end them? To hack: to slash; No more; and by a slash to say we end The heart-ache …

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Mar 17

Lost in a Maze of Twisty Little Java Classes: How often is “infinite scalability” and extensibility really needed?

But look, you found the notice, didn’t you? Yes yes I did. It was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard. — Mr. Prosser and Arthur Dent, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy While digging through …

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Aug 26

Mini Sagas

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 …

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Aug 26

Sometimes More is Just Enough

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 …

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Aug 20

Oooh Shiny! Magpies don’t know what’s just enough!

Magpie from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Magpie.arp.750pix.jpg

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.

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Aug 15

Just Enough Programming: The missing cornerstone

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 it would …

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Aug 14

Quotes on Simplicity

“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 …

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Aug 14

Foundations of Just Enough Programming

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 …

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Aug 09

Just Enough Programming

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 …

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