4 ms·
Big Ball of Mud (1999)
- api 4y agoSeems like a lot of “cloud native” software is this, and nobody suffers but the people who have to work on it or pay the massive cloud bill.
- bitwize 4y agoWell, "the only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user", so don't expect much change as long as the UI looks fresh and the users are happy.
- codeflo 4y ago> "the only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user" I think it's true that user experience is all that matters. Software engineering is just the realization that this will also be true 12 months from now.
- foobiekr 4y agoThe authors could not have even imagined the crazy new innovations in mud balls that microservices would create. And much harder to address.
- marcosdumay 4y agoMicroservices are the act of getting the your ball empty of mud by taking small pieces, squeezing them as hard as you can, and throwing the results all back at the large ball.
- speed_spread 4y agoIt's like a reverse piñata.
- rco8786 4y agoAll software eventually becomes this, "cloud native" or otherwise. It is the "everything evolves into crabs" of software.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoThis describes the app I've been developing for the last couple of years. I've been working with a nontechnical team, who didn't really know what they wanted, and it "accreted," over a period of about 20 months. After we had basically decided that we had finalized the features (they finally knew what they wanted), I tossed out the entire old codebase, refactored the business logic into a framework-independent package module, and have been rewriting the UI, with a designer, on top of that. Every now and then, I can use some snippets from the old codebase, but the majority of the code is new. It adds about three months to the schedule, but it is totally worth it.
- dopidopHN 4y agoIs the old system still running or do you only keep the codebase around for reference?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoIt's not a running system. It's an iOS app. The backend (servers) are running (they haven't changed much), but I keep the old codebase around for snippets.
- dunk010 4y agoOne of the best articles about software engineering ever written. They should pin it to the top of the HN front page :P
- foobiekr 4y agoAgreed. Reading this in 1999 actually explained everything I’d seen and everything I would see. I’ve read a lot of papers but this is the one I see in real life every week for 22 years.
- Caitlynmeeks 4y agoaka main.cpp
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoThis is a great article, but it has some considerable history, on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=laputan.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=laputan.org
- dang 4y agoReposts are fine after a year or so! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html These seem to be the threads with comments: Big Ball of Mud (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28915865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28915865 - Oct 2021 (23 comments) Big Ball of Mud (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22365496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22365496 - Feb 2020 (48 comments) Big Ball of Mud - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650011 - Nov 2019 (1 comment) Big Ball of Mud (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21484045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21484045 - Nov 2019 (1 comment) Big Ball of Mud (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716667 - Feb 2017 (6 comments) Big Ball of Mud (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989424 - Aug 2015 (9 comments) Big Ball of Mud - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6745991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6745991 - Nov 2013 (21 comments) Big Ball of Mud - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911445 - Oct 2009 (2 comments) The "Big Ball of Mud" Pattern - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10259 - April 2007 (2 comments)
- delano 4y agoThanks for taking the time to do this.
- BaraBatman 4y agoHey dang, I was wondering. Do you have any kind of automatization for this type of comments? Or do you manually build the repost list on a selected few posts?
- jodrellblank 4y ago
- vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago[dead]
- dmoy 4y agoEvery time this is posted I forget and think it's going to be about the art form that is, roughly, a big ball of mud that's polished ridiculously smooth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango
- runald 4y ago...then you remember that most applications are also just one big fragile polished big ball of mud.
- gonehome 4y agoI liked this urbit related blog post that starts with the 'big ball of mud' and thinks about how to avoid this if you were to boil the ocean and redesign everything: https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-programming-from.html https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progr...
- anotheraccount9 4y agoEWD 215: A Case against the GO TO Statement (Go-to statement considered harmful): https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF
- windowshopping 4y agoI find the all caps links scattered throughout this article extremely annoying for some reason. Just distracting. Feels very 90s. I'm glad we're 24 years past this style of content.
- zerbinxx 4y agoBy contrast, the listicle that you would read today, written by a college student for some mid-tier “technical news” outlet, would eschew any meaningful reflection on the history of software engineering. It would be required to be too short to actually contain a fully realized argument in order to make room for mobile friendly adverts.
- m463 4y agoThe Rise of "Worse is Better" https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/worse-is-better.html https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/wor...
- hakre 4y agoThe article has its own reference which I'd prefer for its nicer hypertextness and amount of contextual and referenced information: http://www.laputan.org/gabriel/worse-is-better.html http://www.laputan.org/gabriel/worse-is-better.html
- bigballofmud 4y agoIf we'd have known about Dorodango in 1997, we'd probably have found a way to fit it in...