There is an interesting web site called lesscode.org.  From their about box: lesscode.org is a place to advocate, discuss, and practice the art of using less code to get more done. We shun complexity and challenge the status-quo when it impedes our ability to simplify our development tools and processes. We appreciate Python, Ruby, LAMP, REST, KISS, worse is better, and talk like a pirate day. lesscode.org is a loose federation of concerned hackers for web preservation and advocacy.

When I first came to lesscode.org, I thought it was going to be about more design and lesscode. However, it seems that the site is about people that really care about handcrafting excellent code. I can respect that, just different to what I though it was going to be about.

 

One of the topics of interest is a debate on scalability and what that means.  I think the issue of scalability is all about the design and has less to do with any particular programming language, application server, framework, or infrastructure. If the design (via the requirements) calls for the application to scale to x, y or z, with meaningful metrics, then it is up to the Architect to design an application, system, or whatever, to ensure the design meets the requirements. And btw, we are in the software world, we can make anything scale nothing that time and money cant solve in our virtual world.

 

However, there is also the issue around making the software development process scalable and one of the lesscode authors made an analogy to restaurants/cooking and talked about different types of restaurant had different scalability requirements.  Other lesscode commenters thought this was a terrible analogy.  MSFT certainly has a view on scalability and they do use the restaurant analogy in which they call a Software Factory:

 

 A software factory is a product line that configures extensible development tools like Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) with packaged content and guidance, carefully designed for building specific kinds of applications. A software factory contains three key ideas: a software factory schema, a software factory template and an extensible development environment:

 

Think of the software factory schema as a recipe. It lists ingredients, like projects, source code directories, SQL files and configuration files, and explains how they should be combined to create the product. It specifies which DSLs should be used and describes how models based on these DSLs can be transformed into code and other artifacts, or into other models. It describes the product line architecture, and key relationships between components and frameworks of which it is comprised.

 

The software factory template is like a bag of groceries containing the ingredients listed in the recipe. It provides the patterns, guidance, templates, frameworks, samples, custom tools such as DSL visual editing tools, scripts, XSDs, style sheets, and other ingredients used to build the product.

 

An extensible development environment such as VSTS is like the kitchen where the meal is cooked. When configured with the software factory template, VSTS becomes a software factory for the product family.

 

To press this analogy further, the products are like meals served by a restaurant. Software factory stakeholders are like customers who order meals from the menu. A product specification is like a specific meal order. The product developers are like cooks who prepare the meals described by the orders, and who may modify meal definitions, or prepare meals outside the menu. The product line developers are like chefs who decide what will appear on the menu, and what ingredients, processes, and kitchen equipment will be used to prepare them.

 

How about that? In fact, if you look at any industrialized process it has been designed to scale. The key word being designed. So if the restaurant needs to scale to millions, then design it to scale! While I respect my fellow codecrafters, I am waiting for the industrialization of software to take place so I dont have to keep writing the same base code over and over again for each job that comes my way. After serving a million burgers, you would think the codecrafters would get tired of this too?