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[Alaric B. Snell]
> I'm with Simon here; technical aesthetics (elegance of design, not which
> colour it is) are not to be ignored in engineering disciplines.
+1 to this thought, with additional comments;
aesthetics within any discipline reflects an instinctive relation of
fitness. There are all sorts of biological examples of symmetry being
desirable, or the anecdotal evidence that beautiful things are preserved (
Egyptian Pyramids versus your mobile phone being preserved ). Though it is
true that aesthetics can be hijacked, in cathedral design principles
enshrined by some well known computer scientists.
> This has been a long running battle of mine - in my work, I always want to
> spend time designing things before building them. The reasons for this
are:
mine too! but I find the difficulty is when to know 'how much to plan' and
'when to stop planning'...though as time goes on I get better.....
any coding effort could be likened to an expedition to the some distant
mountain summit, there are various techniques which all get you to the top;
a) well planned, well equipped expedition: long, expensive, but with high
chances of success, slow predictable ascent
b) a dash to the summit, leaving the oxygen bottles at home base and
predicting no need for a bivouac on the side of the mountain
c) some blending of a) and b)
d )design a helicopter which operates in rarified atmospheres
business requirements of a coding expedition may be divergent to
requirements for said success of expedition.....anti patterns abound here.
This is why requirements discovery and capture is numero uno as an exercise
in any coding expedition that I am a part of.
oh well,
cheers, jim fuller
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