Re: OOP - a question about database access

In the last exciting episode, "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote:
> "Tak To" <takto_at_alum.mit.edu.-> wrote in message
> news:H8CdnXKaxJ8KODSi4p2dnA_at_comcast.com...
>> Phlip wrote:
>> > Some managers cut everything up into features, sort them by
>> > priority, and track how long each one takes to finish. Then
>> > they use this velocity metric to estimate how many features
>> > would be finished by a given time. This allows them to,
>> > eventually, put the most important 5 pounds of shit into the
>> > bag.
>>
>> It seems to me that these managers have confused features with
>> tasks. Using the analogy of a building: these managers think
>> they can schedule construction by rooms, thereby ignoring
>> tasks such as pouring the foundation, laying down the pipes
>> and ducts and pulling the wires.
>
> A foundation is a feature. Pipes are features. Ducts are
> features. Wires are features. Some features are "must have" features
> and some are not. Humanity got by without foundations, pipes, ducts
> or wires for many millenia. Granted, dwellings without foundations
> have quality, stability and durability issues, but they are still
> used on every continent.

No, I think the analogy is a very good one.

It is _convenient_ to pretend that you can fit of the aspects of the system into some notion of "rooms," so that you can keep building things on by throwing on an extra room here and there.

The result of that, of course, is certainly not an "architected building."

No, instead you get something more resembling a third world "shantytown," where shacks are drawn up one beside the other. Cabling gets thrown in when someone can afford electricity, but the result will fall down the next time Turkey sees an earthquake. (I have seen this frequently, particularly with the sorts of applications and reports that grow up around MS Access, created by urchins that never understood databases...)

Of course, urchins that reside in the shantytown and have lived there through generations of its development are likely to be a lot more comfortable with that than with going off, kicking and screaming, to school where they would be forced to learn all sorts of boring things. After all, street urchins know, by instinct, that mathematics is a sort of "magic" that is really just made for astrologists and other impractical folk, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world.

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