Cargo cult programming
…or how to create huge useless programs, that is. In all fairness to the folks doing this, it’s the best they can do, given the knowledge they hold. And this is where I want to make my argument, but first…
Cargo cult programming, says Wikipedia, “is a style of computer programming characterised by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose”. Let’s expand on that a little bit. How can there be code that serves no purpose? What is the purpose? Good questions!
The purpose of the code is to respond to every need of the product. Pretty simple, right? Right! It’s the every need of the product thingy that’s sort of vague and, frankly, it’s not easy to determine EVERY need of the product. There are lots of variables in this domain, some of which are: user preferences, product usage patterns, user base growth, product runtime infrastructure changes, product developers change rate etc. And I mentioned nothing about actual code yet! That’s right, because before having actual code, we need to determine a model for all those variables mentioned before. “Architecture” I hear you say? Whatever… I don’t care how you call it as long as there is some good thinking done first, to address that model.
Please, oh please don’t get hung up on words like: architecture, model etc. This is exactly where cargo cult programming (CCP henceforth – it would have been funny to have another C in there, before the P) stems from.
