Software Patterns and the Dovetail Joint
I picked up my long-unread copy of Emergent Design by Scott L Brain. I’m not too far in yet, but something he wrote about software patterns struck me in a way that hadn’t before. He mentions that other professions all have their own patterns. Doctors, Lawyers and Carpenters, for example. That made me think of the joints used by carpenters, like the dovetail example on the left[1].
Disclaimer: I’m no carpenter
Just like software patterns, carpentry joints aren’t a drop in solution. Joints are a well understood carpentry pattern but they still must be used in context. The type of wood being joined constrains the joint you can use, the desired appearance constrains which joints can be used, the use of the jointed pieces further constrains the choice of joint. Further, the thickness of the wood will determine the size of the dovetails for example. The constraints go on an on.
The difference between carpentry and software development is that the understanding of which joint to choose has been developed and refined by master craftsmen for thousands of years! You can now buy laminate flooring that just clicks together – but it took the legacy of many, many craftsman hours to make that a possibility.
The take away for me is the re-enforcement of the truth: we’re still the software pioneers. We’re still lashing bits of code together with rope, we can’t quite get a catalog of time-tested, tried and true joints. We know enough to know there must be better ways of doing things, we just don’t have a clue of what they are yet.
Software development might just be about pioneer spirit, and anyone who tells you they’ve got it sorted is probably trying to sell snake oil to the prospectors.
[1] Image used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Licence – Author: Dumitru Rotari
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