So I was reading The Daily WTF again (shut up, I understand some of it), and it led me to the Wikipedia page on anti-patterns, which all right-thinking people should find at least somewhat entertaining. Most anti-patterns are applicable to all sorts of systems beyond programs and office processes.
Take the Big Ball of Mud, for instance. It's what you get whenever anything - a program, a business, a house, a war - is built and fixed in a completely ad hoc fashion, with no overarching plan or control structure. Letting stuff just grow works fine for small and simple things, but if you let a major project of any sort go to seed, unspeakable abominations will, inevitably, spring forth.
Anyhoo, the Big Ball of Mud concept reminded me of the shiny-ball-of-mud, or "dorodango", an unusual pastime that swept the blogs a while ago. Instructions, relevance to developmental psychology, Zen, et cetera.
It just strikes me as rather neat that it is both literally and figuratively possible to polish a Big Ball of Mud until until it becomes very attractive, and may even seem quite valuable.
(Insert link to Microsoft and +5, Insightful moderation here.)
2 November 2006 at 2:17 am
I won't lie, the idea that there exists a topic that you only understand some of left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling.