java.about.com has published my article on "Emergent Package Design", in which I illustrate how the package design continually changes as the underlying code evolves, and the negative impact this can have on the productivity of a development team if it … Read More … Read More
Monthly Archives: July 2006
Struts more twisted than Spring
The structure of Struts is characterized by a nasty dependency tangle that starts at the class-level and percolates up through the package and design-levels. Following my blog on Spring’s “almost perfect” structure, I thought I’d take a look at another … Read More
“Tangles” rather than “Cycles”
I’ve been asked recently why I talk about "tangles" rather than "cycles" in the context of cyclic dependencies. The reason is clear when you look at a graph that contains a "strongly connected component" (a tangle): This graph contains … Read More
Spring’s Structure is “almost perfect”
Keith Donald reports that Spring’s architecture contains not a single dependency cycle. I’ve looked at the structure of many open source projects and generally found them riddled with dependency tangles (junit is an exception – perhaps unsurprising given its small … Read More
More on M.C. Escher and software projects
This is for Paddy and Paul who are having trouble with the principle of design “emergence” and didn’t really get my blog on Eschers “Hands”. Luckily Escher also predicted other software design processes. Guys, do either of these feel more … Read More
Structure101 for Java Build 58b
This build fixes a problem with the transformation feature whereby the resulting structural model was incorrect for some regular expression sequences.
M.C. Esher and Emergent Design
Kevin Kelly gave a talk to the Long Now Foundation called “The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method”. He talks about recursion and emergence from complexity and mentioned Escher’s “Drawing Hands”. Is this the perfect … Read More
The Long Now Foundation
If you like a heavy dose of “context” check out the seminars from the Long Now Foundation. I just returned from an extremely enjoyable 2 week vacation in Nerja in the south of Spain (thanks Joe for the recommendation). But … Read More