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I think they all boil down to basically the same thing. In order to build a complex system you need to build it twice. The first time you will make mistakes t

I think they all boil down to basically the same thing. In order to build a complex system you need to build it twice. The first time you will make mistakes that are difficult and expensive to fix and you need to tell yourself that it is ok to throw it away. This first iteration can come in many forms. In the old days it was done in pseudocode and formal language on paper, aka the waterfall model. UML changed it to be symbols and arrows. With rapid prototyping it is actual working but buggy code. One can see the appeal of doing it in real code, your programmers don't have to learn a second language nor translate the first version from that design language to the computer language. People will say that code is too hard for the design part, but it's the design that's hard, not the code. The real danger is that your prototype will work well enough and you won't have the fortitude to throw it away. That's not a danger with a design document/diagram.

lisper 4y ago
> The real danger is that your prototype will work well enough I don't consider that a "danger", I consider it a good outcome.
- jandrese 4y ago
  No, it's a huge danger. It means you have a product that you will be pressured to be put into production, but it is saddled with technical debt and will likely become a huge hassle to maintain. Your second version will come as a painful set of patches against a mostly running system that is increasingly complex because it has to work around old bugs and design misfeatures.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Not if you write it in Common Lisp. Seriously, I have put a lot of Common Lisp code into production and it just doesn't have these problems because of its ability to redefine classes on the fly. Combine that with an ORM that issues the right ALTER TABLE commands and all but the most radical design changes are completely turnkey, no stick figures needed.

lisper 4y ago

> The real danger is that your prototype will work well enough I don't consider that a "danger", I consider it a good outcome.

jandrese 4y ago
No, it's a huge danger. It means you have a product that you will be pressured to be put into production, but it is saddled with technical debt and will likely become a huge hassle to maintain. Your second version will come as a painful set of patches against a mostly running system that is increasingly complex because it has to work around old bugs and design misfeatures.
- lisper 4y ago
  Not if you write it in Common Lisp. Seriously, I have put a lot of Common Lisp code into production and it just doesn't have these problems because of its ability to redefine classes on the fly. Combine that with an ORM that issues the right ALTER TABLE commands and all but the most radical design changes are completely turnkey, no stick figures needed.