A few weeks ago I wrote that good design is a dying but important art. While I do believe that is true, there is also too much of a good thing. Sometimes you can get too caught up in the ‘ideal’, worrying and designing things to be perfect. Deciding what is the right blend of ideal and pragmatic is also an art, and in my opinion one of the most important tasks of a developer or manager.

I have worked on many web projects in many roles. I have been a junior developer, senior developer, and the technical architect where I was not going to do any of the actual coding. Whether developing or designing you are constantly faced with a challenge. Developing the ideal or textbook vs a real or pragmatic approach. My philosophy is to lean towards pragmatic. I believe you should be versed in the textbook methodologies as they are very useful and it is wasteful to reinvent the wheel. You need them in your arsenal to apply when necessary. In the end if we have a production quality piece of code that runs with minimal issues, and can be updated, do I really care if my developers used the ‘correct’ factory or design methodologies for the project? I do not. The correct methodology for me is the one that works and gets the job done on time. Again I want to re-iterate that does not mean I believe in sloppy, spaghetti code. I certainly do not. But I definitely value function over form.

A lot of these development styles are fads. Yes things are constantly being improved, but just because something is new, its not always better. Extreme programming leads the way to another style. Configuration and initialization files were all the rage for years, now abandoned in favor of self describing code. Developers could sit and debate the correct factory to use for a job in the same time I could code the whole project.

We are builders, we take a tool (programming language) and we create product. So
just like there are many ways to build a house, the same holds true for web development. Sure some methods are better than others, but if your team is talented enough most of the decisions they make will be good enough for the job.

You need to build the product for as long as its lifespan. Not every house is built to stand 500 years, and neither is code. Just like a builder in Montana does not build a house to be hurricane proof you should not build for problems you don’t have. You should build code in a way that it can be modified and extended should the need arise. But if you are building a niche craft site with only a handful of users and 5 products to sell, do not waste time designing to be the next Amazon.com. When you add more products you can worry if your shopping cart class has the extendability to grow, just get the code live.

My advice is if you are a senior tech lead or manager you should keep up with the new methodologies that are making a wave. But don’t chase them all, and don’t distract your development team with all of them. They have a lot of code to write and having them chase the next development fad is not in anyone’s best interest. As a manager you should know when to push your developers towards a certain technology, and where to adapt it to fit your team’s and company’s needs. You may spend 2 years designing the perfect framework for a job but that is just not practical, and in most companies it will not be tolerated. Most senior managers do not care about how it’s done, just that it was completed under budget and on time. As a tech manager your role is to find the most effective blend of ideal and practical to keep management happy and your developers skill set ready to tackle the next project.

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dev team, experiences, philosophy, web resources/tools, weeky wrap by bill breen