>Marc, my friend,
>
>It's the improper application of the rules and principles that cause problems. Not the rules themselves. The author assumes that it's the other way around. I, for one, don't buy it.
>
>Regards,

George,

It is always a bit fishy to extract a quotation from a book, is it not. It think the authors will probably agree with you, especially if you follow _their_ rules.:), because that's what Antipatterns really are, another set of rules. But that is not really the point here.

The problem here is that there is no single set of rules you can follow, that there is no single authority that makes sure that those rules are consistent intrinsically, rather than corresponding one major companies long term planning (read microsoft :)).

And I've seen it time and again, the "rules" of today are tomorrows fads and the influence the changing marketing orientations of MS play here is not coincidental.

This situation is probably caused by the rapid changes that occur in our industry. Bu we also have to draw the logical conclusion from this situation: Pay back periods of investment in modelling are very short. Of course pure OO makes sense, if you had the rest of your life to construct robust systems, but that is not the reality.

So again, I think that to be a good professional in this environment is to know the rules, but apply them parsimonously.

You cannot develop software without a good set of rules of course, but those rules should be based on your own experience and more relevantly your environment, rather than be blindly taken over from the current guru,

Programming is to the best of my knowledge only marginally a religious activity :).

Kind regards.

marc



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