Re: Window Workflow Foundation (WF) is big, and how CSLA can support it

boo posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007

I haven't had a chance to read the whole post yet, so I might eat crow for what I'm about to say, and as usual my mouth speaks before I think...but:

The so-called application that I'm currently working on is such a pain mostly because some developers, who are long gone and left w/o any documentation or comments beyond the most primitive in there code, decided it would be a good idea to modify the stock UIP framework.  Not that I'm a fan of UIP...I think it's the ultimate in over-architecture...along with WWF...it's hype.  WF is nothing new, you can design it visually, you can design it by code...but most, again MOST, business apps aren't so fluid that you need config driven or GUI driven workflows...and 9 out of 10 times those that go to that level will require recoding anyway if you change the WF.  But I digress...

So now they've altered the framework of a reasonable documented set of assemblies...so now every time something goes wrong I have to go and dig through line after line of there altered source code to see what they changed and why it's hosed.  Doing this with an excellent framework such as CSLA probably can have the same effect depending on the customization.  A reason why I'm against open-source.  When you get other people messing with the food on the stove you're going to get something that doesn't taste right.

Anyway, the point is if they would've left well enough alone most of my hours spent debugging would never occur.  If they designed for what they needed instead of what they thought was a cool idea, the hours would've been even less.  Every developer in the world should be forced to read Martin Fowler's Refactoring book...in particular the section on Speculative Generalities before ever being allowed to design I thing.