Code: OOP over the top: a hilarious dissection of some of the most monstrous ‘how to rewrite OO-style’ I have ever seen — take a 15-line if/elseif/else clause and rewrite as a thoroughly over-engineered unmaintainable 7-class, 15-method disaster, using the Singleton and Factory patterns. The rewrite in the original article is intended seriously, as far as I can tell.
As the xmldatabases.org article says: ‘this is really a general problem with OO development. Fancy object oriented architectures have become the goal and this article maybe makes that point more clearly then anything I could ever say. It’s representative of the thinking from a few years ago (written in 2000), and shows us just how much damage we now have to undo. It basically says that the simple solution that just works is wrong and will be unmaintainable. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not, nowhere does the article consider the question of whether or not that code actually needs to be that generic. It simply says that the simple solution is bad and that the seven class monster they came up with is the right solution. Talk about doing a disservice to students trying to learn how to build solid computer systems.’
(Found via sourcefrog.net — Martin Pool’s weblog, great for Linux and code bits).
WebMake: linux.com: An introduction to building sites with WebMake. W00t! Let’s hope nobody asks any questions while I’m away for xmas ;)