Friday, September 23, 2005

Acronyms cont.

I have to make one confession...
Even though I find that some over-use acronyms, there are 3 acronyms related to software development that I am fond of, i.e., DRY (don't-repeat-yourself), KISS (keep-it-simple-stupid) and YAGNI (you-ain't-going-to-need-it).

Monday, September 19, 2005

Invasion of the acronyms

What's up with the acronyms: Pragmatic unit testing: summary? I fear that sometimes content is sacrificed for a good acronym.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

When to apply OO in programming

I have been thinking some more on Object oriented programming. In school we read "Object-Oriented Modelling and Design" by Rumbaugh et.al.. The book and the teacher made a big issue out of mapping real-world objects to programming-objects and that inheritance promotes code reuse. I was quite enthusiastic about the book at the time, but now don't think this book did me much service.

Now I think that OO shouldn't be applied forcefully in the design phase (one-off design), and I don't think code-reuse is a big issue. I am convinced that inheritance relationships often do not become apparent until the code is refactored. I also think that one should not force a inheritance relationship onto classes except where needed, i.e., at the hinge-points (as Robert Martin calls them). Inheritance should be introduced while refactoring in order to simplify the code, manage its complexity, as I think Steve McConnell would put it.