[Vtigercrm-developers] Ideas for vtiger architecture moving forward

[Caryl Takvorian]

Just for the sake of it, let me say that I whole heartedly agree with
Dennis.
I'm not unfortunately convinced that his (our) opinion will change anything,
but I find the arguments truthfully compelling.

Caryl



On 7/14/06, Dennis Grant <dgrant at accuratetechnologies.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Really what I am trying to accomplish is to make your life easier in
> the
> > long run than what it currently is, even when diverging from the
> > standard way of doing it with-in vtiger.  There is a learning curve
> that
> > will come along with this but correct documentation and developer
> > support via this mailing list should help you get past any of that.
>
> Except that you're killing me with your good intentions.
>
> The life of an integrator doesn't permit steep learning curves and heavy
> abstractions; there just isn't time to do so. I've got a dozen different
> systems to get to play together, a boss screaming at me to get this
> stuff done yesterday, and no time to devote to learning whatever
> abstraction layer you've decided to implement.
>
> And Murphy's Law being what it is, if your abstraction model has one
> flaw, that will be the thing that my boss wants as his top priority.
>
> "Perfect is the enemy of good enough" I don't want "perfect"; I want
> "good enough" I want to be able to dive into the source and start
> modifying how the thing works *right now* without having to trace back a
> billion functions or wrap my brain around your object model. I don't
> have time to do so, because I'm simultaneously trying to play with a
> dozen other pieces of the puzzle.
>
> Guys, I have been playing this game for a LONG time. I have written
> major applications to perform mission-critical business functions.(At
> one time, if my code broke DaimlerChrysler stopped building cars) I have
> seen and dealt with thousands of software projects, both as a
> participant and as an observer, and almost without fail, every time
> somebody sets out to do the "perfect" object-based, extensible,
> customizable framework, it just leads to tears.
>
> I am utterly convinced that the way to success is to write code that is
> optimised for human legibility and comprehension. If you write code that
> any decent developer can pick up, find his bearings in a couple of
> seconds, and then comprehend *without* the benefit of having read the
> thousand-page project definition in advance, then you are doing well.
>
> The second I have to go to a developer list to get assistance you, as a
> developer, have FAILED ME as an integrator - because if your code is so
> illegible (or so heavily abstracted, or has such a steep learning curve,
> or whatever) that I cannot figure it out on my own in a few minutes and
> so have to drop everything until I can get some assistance... well then,
> you've burned up my precious, precious time.
>
> That code might be sheer genius. It might be, once you have tackled the
> learning curve, breathtakingly beautiful. But if I can't just fire up vi
> and dive in, then it is WRONG.
>
> Do you see what I'm getting at? Keep it SIMPLE and you win. Overthink
> it, and you'll wind up with something that only YOU understand... and
> I'm back with my privately-maintained fork.
>
> The big problem with the current state of Vtiger 4.x is that it
> straddles both worlds. There are parts of the code that are fairly
> straightforward and out in plain sight, and only lack comments to make
> them "good enough". Then there are parts that want to be object-oriented
> with an API, but really depend on a couple of heavily-overloaded
> megafunctions buried deep in the depths of util.php (also uncommented)
> so you have to play API detective to figure out just what the hell is
> happening where. And then there's parts of the code that mix both.
>
> It'd be SO much easier to maintain if all the code that related to a
> module (less some *basic* toolkit functions that could reside in a
> common include) just lived in that module.
>
> Please please PLEASE, for the love of GOD, don't go down the path of
> objectifying everything and abstracting the code to the point of
> incomprehensibility.
>
> DG
>
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