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Typical noob mistake #73: trying to make a class out of every rule in a rules-based system. I hate to be blunt (or worse, snarky) but seriously, everybody does

Typical noob mistake #73: trying to make a class out of every rule in a rules-based system. I hate to be blunt (or worse, snarky) but seriously, everybody does this at least once: modeling and factoring out tons of bullshit when the user is really explaining an ad hoc rules system. Very painful. At some point during analysis, you have to ask yourself "Do I really want to make the system more complex for each example of X the user gives me? Or just acknowledge that the user is free to come up with all kinds of crazy rules from now until the cows come home, and code that?" (and simplify)

glassx 15y ago
Your reply reminds me of Zed Shaw's presentation 'The ACL is dead'. Basically he said that if the law rules that you have to handle are turing complete, you're probably better off with a turing complete language: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420650 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420650 Of course, procedural code becomes spaghetti code quite easily, but one probably needs the same discipline when doing object oriented/relational modeling...