Simplicity is bliss

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Occam's Razor versus the swiss army knife

The advances in mathematics come from finding a simpler way of doing something that was previously complicated. As software is a branch of applied mathematics the same applies by inference to software. Essentially we apply Occam's razor to cut away the complexity and arrive at a simple, elegant solution.

Approaches based on object-orientation, like CORBA and DCOM are swiss army knife approaches to software. Whenever a problem is encountered we add another blade to the knife (create another object or add methods to and existing object). Eventually we end up with the situation where most of the work is finding the right blade for the job. It may be there is no suitable blade and we have to create a new one but often a new blade is created because no one can find the suitable one that already exists because there are now so many blades that finding the right one is all but impossible.

We might compare this with an Occam's razor software approach like the relational model. In the relational model all data is represented in one way and one way only and all manipulation fo the data can be achieved with only seven operators (actually less because join is a combination of product and restriction). The relational model is thus inherently simpler,more flexible and much more powerful than approaches based on object-orientation. I am strongly of the opinion that efforts to integrate systems using object-orientated approaches like CORBA or DCOM are basically doomed to failure.

Software advances come from the Occam's razor approach. Swiss army knife approaches give the illusion of progress because lots of software is being written and apparently lots of functionality is being added. The problem is that all of this functionality is application specific rather than generic. What is in fact happening is complexity is being piled on complexity until the whole thing becomes basically unusable.

Occam's razor type advances come out of software's roots in applied mathematics and logic and progress is therefore slow but real and in the long term enormously more beneficial to productivity, clarity and quality than the swiss army knife approach.

As Woody Allen said, he was amazed that the Swiss had survived for so long without being invaded when the only weapons they had were these knives. Surely the enemy would overwhelm them before they had decided which blade to use?

Posted by: jorwell   Posted on: 07/19/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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