The Bigger the Box
I had a thought today that computer languages are boxes that get bigger ad bigger the longer they are used.
Posted by 11/07/2005
The Bigger the Box
As a language or a framework are used more and more, features are added until it becomes a bloated mass. It seems to be some kind of law of Nature. I'm not sure anything can be done to stop it.
I was thinking about how my experience with extending the Django api started reminding me of Zope. I earlier wrote that I thought Zope was so complicated because of this principle of accretion - although I hadn't thought to call it that at the time. As more and more people use a software, it gets larger and more cumbersome every year - until somehow it is useless because it is immoveable, and must be replaced. There seems to be a certain principle at work where the more useful a framework, the more decisions it makes for you, and the more decisions it makes for you, the harder it is to change.
Right now Django seems to be treading the line well. Keeping it's eye on simplicity. But when you get into the depths of it - some of the 'magic' is hard to un-entwine. I guess I won't know until later whether this is cause I'm being stupid or because the code is too abstruse.
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