Leon Rosenberg wrote:
We make far more complicated programms in far less time and for lesser cost.
"Complicated" is a pretty loaded term... I don't see much complication
in the majority of web apps. Big, sure. Complicated? Sometimes. The most
complicated stuff I've worked on lately is rules engines, for which I
used Jess, which looked suspiciously like a combination of Lisp and
Prolog. Interaction between existing systems can get hairy fairly
quickly as well.
We definitely have better _tools_ for making big, complicated systems,
although the tools I use today (things like Eclipse, IdeaJ, etc.) shine
(for me) because they reduce some of the tedium of programming in Java.
I was able to generate more agile, complicated, and functional systems
using SmallTalk or Lisp environments fifteen years ago, and they've held
up extremely well for today's needs, AFAICT.
Patterns make code understanding simplier, because everyone (should) know
them, and simplicity is the goal as many of us stated before.
I think patterns _can_ make code comprehension easier. I definitely
agree that simplicity is a Very Important Goal, but abstraction isn't
always the right path to reach it, that's all I'm saying.
You can't reinvent the wheel each time you write a piece of code, it's
simply waste of your time and customers/companies money.
I've found that the wheels invented (by me, anyway) are generally
different enough that it's very tricky, and not terribly cost-effective,
to over-generalize. There are, of course, places where a good,
generalized model works perfectly and covers enough bases that the
pathological cases can be worked around easily.
I should point out that in the world of web applications I've found
quite a bit of use for several of the more popular patterns, and am very
impressed with how they've helped me out, and I desperately wish I had
more time to use more of the Really Good Frameworks that exist. But I do
a lot of other types of programming as well (embedded systems, device
drivers, AI, and other miscellaneous junk) an only a few patterns have
really made much of a difference to me there (things like decorators,
facades, and IoC seem to be almost universally helpful).
I could just be a sucky programmer, too :D
Dave
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