The Big Ball of Mud

tobyhede

I have been revisiting one of my favourite explorations of software architecture: The Big Ball of Mud.

The key take away for me is the following message about developing features first:

You need to deliver quality software on time, and under budget.

Therefore focus first on features and functionality, then focus on architecture and performance.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 8:53 pmand is filed under Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The Big Ball of Mud”

  • nicholas f Says:
    March 10th, 2009 at 10:16 pm

    Definitely. In fact, sometimes following such principles and focusing on simplicity can end with very elegant pieces of code which ‘do the job’, rather than the grander preconceptions which a mind can build up with preconcceptions of design and architecture.

  • tim Says:
    May 22nd, 2010 at 8:44 am

    thats a slippery slope though – if you build to a feature spec, you might loose sight of scalability.

    I’d actually propose you focus on structural base functinoality, but leave features for later, then build a base architecture that is abstract and truly object oriented.

    and presto, you’re on your way to great software.

    except, doing things this way require investments in frameworks that aren’t immediately visible by business owners, and thus rarely get funded. and so we go back to the old convoluted way of building software feature-by-feature, until it’s a BIG BALL OF MUD.

    …sigh…

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