“dichotomies make it easier.”
Just over two decades ago The cathedral and the bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond was published. It talked about software development and kind of suggested that a more bazaar like ‘architecturing’ would improve the way complex systems could be build. Nowadays BDUF is a swear-word. In an ever-changing world, you can’t predict the future. So why design for one year. Experiment! Extend!
When I was visiting the Fronteers conference a few weeks ago I had a short interaction where I apologized for my maybe bit academic bias. I remembered I was still quite fond of some old xhtml standard that never really arrived.
Reading the online resilient web design-essay I was reminded of the continuous struggle between practitioners and the standards co…
Hacking versus doing things ‘correctly’
Although in mainstream media hacking is considered as something bad, something criminals would do, hacking has really nothing to do with bad things. Hacking in software is about building a bazaar instead of building a cathedral (Raymond, 1999). Hacking is central to the idea of agile programming and the free software movement. While building a cathedral is about planning things properly, the bazaar way is the shacky way of hacking things together. Being able to build something cheaply, quickly. The it-just-works approach. Others counter this notion of hacking it together as something being unstable. In the long run, they argue, hacking will be more expensive. But think about it… how often have you worked on something great, something really complex, something you’ve tried to release perfectly, and a) how often have you succeeded in actually releasing something and b) how much better has it become through this careful process of discussing, planning and crafting - doing it the right …
Dit artikel van murblog van Maarten Brouwers (murb) is in licentie gegeven volgens een Creative Commons Naamsvermelding 3.0 Nederland licentie .