Your thoughts on Martin Fowler?

Hi all,

lately, and very unfortunately, I had to put Smalltalk on the side a
bit, and learn about the wonderful world of J2EE and WebSphere in
particular. Me being a freelance Wepapp developer looking for a more
steady source of income.

Yes, do feel sorry for me.

So with all that wonderful new stuff to learn about such as UML and XP
and EJB and other buzzword which will look good on a CV I came across
the name Martin Fowler quite often, which was a new name on my list of
gurus.

I've read many Smalltalk books by now, quite a few non-ST OO-Books, of
which I in particular cherish the GOFs Design Patterns and also the
Smalltalk Design Patterns companion.

I also read a number of articles from Kent Beck, which seem to me to
have real pearls hidden between a bigger number of things that I would
not necessarily consider to be pearls.

And with me having to read articles by M. Fowler, I find that I have yet
to find the pearls.

Am I missing something here with regard to Fowler, he seems to be in
rather high regard these days with buzzword followers?

I sure would appreciate your thoughts here.

Günther

Günther Schmidt wrote:

> lately, and very unfortunately, I had to put Smalltalk on the side a
> bit, and learn about the wonderful world of J2EE and WebSphere in
> particular. Me being a freelance Wepapp developer looking for a more
> steady source of income.
>
> Yes, do feel sorry for me.

No no no! I was forced to drop Smalltalk for Java *years* ago, so feel
sorry for me instead!

> Am I missing something here with regard to Fowler, he seems to be in
> rather high regard these days with buzzword followers?

I was just reading an article by Clive James the other day, which talked
about how the teaching of English has fallen to such a low level that
not only can most people not form a grammatical sentence, most of them
don't know it.

The *very next* article I sat down to read was Fowler's historical
overview paper, "GUI Architectures", which starts with:

"Graphical user interfaces have become a familiar part of our software
landscape, both as users and as developers."

I take it from this that some GUIs are users, and some GUIs are
developers. I never knew.

> Günther



                   Steve

Günther,

> Am I missing something here with regard to Fowler, he seems to be in
> rather high regard these days with buzzword followers?

I think Fowler is a good author.  He is well-informed and has an insightful
understanding.  He is able to express that understanding well]*] -- clearly,
briefly, and simply.  As an example, I like his exposition of what "mock
objects" are, and how the philosophy behind that kind of testing differs from
other, superficially similar, styles.
    http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html

I also like that fact that he is /sensible/ -- there are far too many frothing
zealots out there.  Fowler takes (IMO) a reasonably balanced approach, and is
pragmatic about benefits and costs (e.g. his UML distilled book).

OTOH, a lot of his stuff doesn't really interest me very much.  I'm interested
in how software can/should be structured, whereas most of his stuff seems to
focus on the processes used to /write/ the software.  (As far as I'm concerned,
that is a solved issue -- Just Write The Damned Code(tm) works well if you are
good enough, and if not then you don't have a hope, no matter what development
processes you follow[**]).

The only thing of his that I've read which is about design, "Analysis
Patterns", was for me a big disappointment.  Much dryer than is usually the
case
for his writing.  Also it is overloaded with UML diagrams which used as the
primary expository device, rather than just as support for more descriptive
text.  I find it unreadable.

    -- chris

[*] Despite Steve's quibbling ;-)

I may add that I have read Clive James's autobiography, and I don't think he's
in a good position to be critical.  The grammar might have been fine (I didn't
notice), but it's beyond my understanding how someone writing on the topic
which presumably interests him most -- himself  -- and who normally throws
words around with trenchant élan, could have produced something so dreary...


[**]  This is not /entirely/ tongue-in-cheek.

Chris Uppal wrote:

> I may add that I have read Clive James's autobiography, and I don't think he's
> in a good position to be critical.  The grammar might have been fine (I didn't
> notice), but it's beyond my understanding how someone writing on the topic
> which presumably interests him most -- himself  -- and who normally throws
> words around with trenchant élan, could have produced something so dreary...

The James article in question was a bit of a dull old thing too.

I went to see Clive James speak once, and he seemed to be on autopilot.
I guess we can't sparkle all the time.

(And to stay minimally on topic, I think I agree with you on Fowler:
solid, sane, methodical, but not always that exciting)



                       Steve