Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Complexity 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • You remove complexity by redefining the problem, abandoning unnecessary constraints, or fixing the root of the problem. Most of that means figuring out the actual desired end state rather than the perceived one. For instance, "I want a list of customers" instead of "I want an HTML table generated dynamically from our legacy database". In the military we call this "commander's intent"---things are going to go to crap and rather than sticking to the plan, we improvise, adapt, and overcome to acheive the commander's intent rather than the plan in place before things went to crap (although sometimes our methods are less than laudatory).

    Fools ignore it - "Can't you just..." use MS SQL server for everything under the sun?

    Pragatists suffer it - just brute force it, (or install Microsoft) and add more to the budget for the extra work. Modify everything to work around problems that wouldn't be there in a different approach.

    Geniuses remove it - use the right tools for the right job, but don't make the tools the job. DBI, for instance, removes the particular database product from the problem. The database servre no longer has a stranglehold on the design.
    • Great answer, it got me thinking.

      "You remove complexity by redefining the problem"

      This I like. A lot.

      "Geniuses remove it"

      I guess one way of removing complexity is to just swipe it under the rug--data hiding and modular design. By definition you hide complexity and provide a simpler way of looking at things.
      • Sweeping it under the rug is the pragmatist approach---that's just dealing with it. Abstraction means the complexity is still there even though it is hidden.

        My DBI example may have been ungood, but then again, you can completely remove the database server from the problem---not just in abstraction but also in reality. You can use DBI with flat files (just like we do in Stonehenge's DBI course where we write a Zork text adventure game starting with flat files and DBI, then at the end convert it to mysql w
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.