While still reeling from the MyHome debacle (read previous post) I happened to stumble upon Dark Roasted Blend, a really interesting blog. In fact there is so much interesting content that I’ll have to go back and spend some more time there.
Anyway, my link into the blog was to the page on Incomprehensible Intersections and Spaghetti Junctions which is a collection of aerial photographs of ridiculously planned intersections. Some of the maps are also quite amusing.
What these photos highlight is the fact that without effective planning, design is difficult at best.
I like to think that software application design and development are analogous with civil design and construction. The following are examples of software design roles and their civil equivalents:
- usability practitioner = engineer
- producer = architect
- graphic/visual designer = interior decorator
In a living, growing web application, like many of the ones that I work with, the design has generally evolved over time and the initial blueprint is very different to what the code is today. Spaghetti code replaces the spaghetti junctions but for all intents and purposes, the code is as difficult for a developer to navigate as the junctions are for a driver.
Every application I have worked on is full of spaghetti code. Is software doomed to be built as poorly as these highway intersections? Are software architects failing in the same way that these town planners failed?
I shudder to think what the off ramp at line 3225 of the MyHome website looks like!
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