Thursday, April 07, 2005

OO Projects in DP culture

After the presentation below Steve G. asked :
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When the user (the one who is paying the bills) starts the project off with 'we know what data is available, and we've mocked up what we want the pages to look like and how they should flow, what we need is for someone to get it on the Web'
... you'll never get out of the Data and Processing scenerio. How do you typically address these?
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He's absolutley right. That's why I say the the Data Processing attitude is deeply dug into
the larger culture. The OO or DP decision is usually made before anyone knows that they
are actually making a decision.

However, you can at least put together a Simple Domain Model and build with that.
The requirements above do push you into talking about data and transformations, where you implemented is still (maybe) under control of the programmer/designer.

It's best, of course, if you can refocus the requirements discussion away from data fileds and transformations and onto business problems and behavior.

That is often quite tricky given that most IT people and most business people deep in their sub-conscious can only think about programs in terms of non-OO, data processing concepts.
That's one reason I also talked about small improvments we can make like eliminating the use of un-encapsulated, public constants.
It's a small thing. But it can move us all to focusing more on Behavior and Nameing.
With any change, I encourge Baby Steps in the OO direction.