damm0's Journal: Fight Complexity (please)

Complexity is something my industry deals with. We write software for machines that execute billions of operations per second, so complexity comes with the territory. We've got so much power to burn, there's an entire industry based on a machine simulator (the JVM).

Many attempts have been launched to deal with the problem by abstracting problems to libraries, and in some cases it helps. Then along comes some coder who needs to whip up some protocol handler and goes crazy integrating every damned library they can get their grubby hands on. JMX. Servlets. EJBs. All for a silly little protocol handler that could just be wrapped up into some simple plain old java objects.

J2EE should be distributed with a license that reads "Warning: Contents might feed featureitis. Seek professional help now." Gah, I'm as guilty as anyone I suppose. I run a heavy desktop and I like it. I've been known to thrash myself into a tangled mess in response to new problems.

Maybe that's why the best is so expensive.