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IKEA-Oriented Development
(taylor.town)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Programming
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My AOP Professor once said that today, we build software like medival smiths built swords: The customer would describe how he would want his sword to look and feel like, and the smith crafted each and every one individually. This led to very unique and well fit, but also very expensive products.
He said that we should aim to build software products like the industrialization revolutionalised manufacturing: Assembling many modular parts into something, instead of hand crafting everything. In his opinion, this will lead to faster and cheaper development.
This is basically the unix philosophy. Build a bunch of separate apps that can be hooked together (via pipes).
Sort of. I think of the Unix philosophy as being like Lego. Here's a box of goodies, go crazy. Even Ikea still requires user assembly.
Most end users just can't do much with the first and often even get tripped up by the second. What we need is something in between that a programmer can use to quickly throw something together to user requirements.
Actually, that's much like what I was doing with Microsoft Access and Visual Basic decades ago. I probably would never have survived in an actual software development shop, but I was kept very busy by a bunch of small businesses that loved the quick turnaround and manageable costs.