Ah, serendipity. I’ll share the steps that brought me to the point of writing this entry. Last Friday, I noticed that two people I knew through entirely different channels and have worked with started getting into a blog debate. Now Jef (with one ‘f’) Newsom has outed me near the end of this entry. That, plus another point below, got me to write this up. On the other side of the debating table is Jeff (with two ‘f’s) Schneider. I wasn’t aware Jef (with one ‘f’) had a blog until Jeff (with two ‘f’s) had linked to it. I thought it was a good excuse to get back in touch with each of them and comment on what a small world it is.
Now I find out that Jeff (with two ‘f’s) has brought the bible into the discussion. Well, I just happened to hear something in this Sunday’s sermon that’s quite relevant. Ah, but before I explore that, for those who may not have followed the above links, I should mention just what it is that Jeff and Jef are arguing discussing with gusto: Service Oriented Architectures, their definition, rules, tenets, precepts, best practices, etc. (pick your term). Well, the sermon quote that struck me was “laws are childish”.
What does that mean? Well, that laws/rules are for those who are lacking knowledge and maturity, ie children. Those who have matured and internalized the fundamentals of a subject do not need them. This applies not only in the religious sense of how to live your life, but also to the technical sense of SOA. If you have an internalized understanding of good software design and distributed systems, you’re bound to come up with a SOA.
I mean no offense to those who are trying to nail down the fundamentals of what makes an architecture “service oriented”. For some it is a very handy way to organize their own knowledge. And there’s certainly a need to have laws for any developers on a project who have not reached the required maturity and experience levels, but in my opinion these should be more project specific rather than broad architectural category laws. Frankly, I’m not sure if my post adds anything to either side of the debate; I haven’t digested the details of the debate enough to really know.
I do like the slogan “laws are childish”. I’ll have to keep testing that to see where else it applies. I wonder if it explains why the people most suited to run a country are the ones least likely to want to run for office.
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