From: Doug Sutherland (wearable_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 2002-02-27 13:01:41
John,
> Yep I agree we have enough interest now in the plug-in/
> framework idea from programmers and C++
I'm a bit confuseled about this "plug-in" idea. In my
view there is a difference between object-oriented
code (objects/classes), component-based architectures
(Java Beans and COM/OLE/etc), distributed components
(EJB/DCOM), and plug-ins.
Plug-ins seem to usually be a way for third parties
to interface products, like for example MIME types
in a web browser calling a helper app (winamp etc).
So let's not confuse all of these things, and let's
not get too complex. Yes, planning is good, but I'm
not convinced that plug-ins are necessary, and also
frameworks can be a path to complexity. I've seen
some pretty huge and ugly frameworks out there.
Adding the ideas of distributed components and/or
plug-ins seems to be a bunch of complexity that we
don't need. Even components are questionable, it's
not like this system is going to be reconfigured
in many different ways (the whole idea behind
components is assemly in a GUI tool where you
"snap together" components). It takes a LOT of
work to build a good component-based system.
So that leaves good old object-orientation. I don't
see why we need to go further than this. Planning,
therefore, IMO is making a good set of object
classes and interfaces. What I am most concerned
about is the abstracting of layers so that the GUI
is not tied directly to the FFT or the input or
the coniguration details. As I mentioned before,
I think something along the lines of the
model-view-controller design pattern would work
nicely for this. What we end up with is a set of
APIs, call it a framework if you want, that is
just a buzzword for APIs. It would also be easy
to add distributed (networking) features by
just extending the API.
Component based systems, especially distributed
ones, tend to be hairballs. CORBA is a hairball.
Gnome desktop is based on CORBA for all of the
wrong reasons IMO, and it's huge and complex.
K Desktop is becoming a hairball too. Count how
many MBs of cruft you need. It's like an OS!
Netscrape and Internet Exploder are becoming
like operating systems too. I upgraded to
Netscape 6.2 last weel and was horrified at
how big and slow it is, and how many add-ons
it has, many of which I have no choice but
to install. I immediately took that hairball
off my system and went back to version 4.78.
Again, planning is goodness, but let's don't
make another browser, DCOM, or CORBA. Clever
programmers make clean and simple and small
systems.
-- Doug
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : 2002-07-27 12:28:39 BST