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What I'm Up to Now

martinfowler.com

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Re: What I'm Up to Now

#71

Post by detaro »

kybishop wrote: post #69

Lots of comments here opposed to Martin Fowler's advice. I'm curious if anyone who is anti-Fowler has software design books they _do_ recommend? (Asking because I'd love to read them)

Since the problem usually isn't with the software design advice, but "people read software design books and then try to force whatever they read into their projects", I guess what would make a book "good" for that is "the author isn't popular enough to cause something to be trendy". IMHO Fowlers writing is just fine as "these are things people have done and you might consider" (and what I've read mostly seemed to be written that way, not overly pushy), but its so popular that if he writes about a new thing, too many people then jump onto it as the next big thing, if it matches their problems or not, and that gets painful to work with. Although for Fowler to write about something, I think it already has some trendiness going on and he's not usually on the forefront of new ideas?

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#72

Post by thehappypm »

vlunkr wrote: post #43
recursivedoubts wrote: post #40

Martin, if you are reading this, here's something you could do: Revisit REST (and the Richardson Maturity Model[1]) and explain why REST has failed so spectacularly in the JSON API world. It's worth doing because REST-ful hypermedia systems are using an interesting and distinctive network model, and most younger web engineers don't know much about it and end up using the client-server approaches that have become so c…

> explain why REST has failed so spectacularly in the JSON API world Could you elaborate on this?

By failed, I think they mean “spectacularly wide usage, with some drawbacks”.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#73

Post by benhoyt »

s1k3s wrote: post #61

Probably not necessarily on topic - but I really want to say that this guy has been the #1 source of pain in my developer career so far. There've been so many projects where I had to implement some solution some way because the "architect" said "that's how Fowler recommends it, so that's how we're doing it", even if the solution was so bad that everyone saw it coming back to bite us from miles away. I read his books…

I sympathize (I like saying I don't do BDD, Buzzword-Driven Development), but I'm not terribly up on Fowler's work -- can you provide some concrete examples of things he recommends that were over-engineered or just plain bad for your use cases?

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#74

Post by plorkyeran »

thehappypm wrote: post #72
vlunkr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> explain why REST has failed so spectacularly in the JSON API world Could you elaborate on this?

By failed, I think they mean “spectacularly wide usage, with some drawbacks”.

REST as Fowler advocated for is used approximately nowhere. The widely used thing known as REST is very unlike it.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#75

Post by denvercoder904 »

gighjifews wrote: post #44

Somewhat flippant, but also a serious question - do people like Martin Fowler and uncle bob actually do anything or do they just describe systems that do not (and probably will never) actually exist? Have they built real world software, or do they just describe some ideal state that has never actually occurred in reality - some kind of geek porn? I’d much rather listen to people who have actually done things than peo…

Does he have a public github repo? I would love to see some of the code that he writes or projects that he has worked on.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#76

Post by dasil003 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #54

I like The Agile Manifesto . I feel that the jury is still out, on how effective it is, in practice; not because it's bad, but because I think it has problems in application, in the regular schlub world. Note that I like the Manifesto, but have been underwhelmed by what I've seen, in its expression. I feel that Mr. Fowler, and his compatriots came out with a great "vision statement," that may not be applied particula…

This resonates a lot, I like this idea of a "shepherding process" and digger deeper into what it takes to make big projects successful over time.

That said, I think distilling down this hard-won experience tends to lead to cargo-culting. Just look at "Agile" itself and how it's been embraced and then twisted by consultants into the exact opposite of what was intended by The Agile Manifesto to begin with. This stuff sells because people want clarity of what to do on a daily basis, they don't want to confront the reality that is no guaranteed path to make large scale software successful. Certainly some process and structure are helpful as long as they are specific to the problem at hand, and focused on the needs of the people actually doing the solving and giving them whatever air cover and cross-pollination needed for them to get the reps on the actual software.

Typically these types of projects happen in large orgs where there are incentives for middle management to avoid culpability for failure rather than to do what it takes to succeed (especially if it's a hard problem). In this kind of environment, process is often used as a cudgel for one group to protect itself by claiming "I did my job".

So to your question: how effective is The Agile Manifesto in practice? I think of it sort of in the necessary-but-not-sufficient bucket. Basically if you have buy-in to give a team this flexibility and autonomy you have a crack at solving a hard problem. Now it depends on the team and the problem: is the problem ultimately solvable and does this team have the chops?

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#77

Post by dgellow »

dvaun wrote: post #4

Near the end of his post, he writes: > I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me. Maybe this has been discussed in depth elsewhere, but my question in response to this is: how does one/how do we end up feeling like this? And how can you work toward not feeling this way?

My personal issue was undiagnosed adult ADHD. Learning about it and adjusting my life around that fact has been immensely useful so far. Though I’m far from being done with that process (and likely to never be done…).

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#78

Post by amw-zero »

kybishop wrote: post #69

Lots of comments here opposed to Martin Fowler's advice. I'm curious if anyone who is anti-Fowler has software design books they _do_ recommend? (Asking because I'd love to read them)

The people that don't like him don't enjoy any books. They just enjoy "getting stuff done." That's really what I find when talking to people about why they don't like concepts that he introduces. They have no alternative, they just don't like people who come across as dogmatic.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#79

Post by amw-zero »

s1k3s wrote: post #61

Probably not necessarily on topic - but I really want to say that this guy has been the #1 source of pain in my developer career so far. There've been so many projects where I had to implement some solution some way because the "architect" said "that's how Fowler recommends it, so that's how we're doing it", even if the solution was so bad that everyone saw it coming back to bite us from miles away. I read his books…

As is always the case, I feel the exact opposite. The #1 source of pain in my career is people not understanding that certain concepts / principles are really the key to surviving in a complex system.

But, we probably don't build the same kinds of software. Shooting him down because he isn't talking about the kind of software you build is pretty ignorant.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#80

Post by Andys »

vlunkr wrote: post #43
recursivedoubts wrote: post #40

Martin, if you are reading this, here's something you could do: Revisit REST (and the Richardson Maturity Model[1]) and explain why REST has failed so spectacularly in the JSON API world. It's worth doing because REST-ful hypermedia systems are using an interesting and distinctive network model, and most younger web engineers don't know much about it and end up using the client-server approaches that have become so c…

> explain why REST has failed so spectacularly in the JSON API world Could you elaborate on this?

I wonder about this too. I regularly read that REST is bad/failed. But it appears to have had been widely adopted in a soft way, beating any competing ideas.
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