[IxDA Discuss] Alan Cooper on Software Design: Code=Design?

[Adrian Howard]

On 29 Oct 2007, at 21:32, Christopher Fahey wrote:
[snip]
> Is this true? I've never heard of software design being done using
> code. Yes, I've heard of coding being done very early in a build
> process, in the form of proof-of-concept work or prototyping. And
> often this code is used all the way to the final product, often
> serving as a foundation for the overall architecture. I've also heard
> of engineers beginning coding with extremely poor design
> documentation, sometimes with no design at all but requirements
>
> But to call that kind of code "design"? When a software engineer
> starts coding without a design plan, which happens sometimes, you can
> barely call what they are doing design. But he makes it sound like
> this is standard practice. I've never heard that before, except maybe
> very recently in the context of Agile.
[snip]

A rather belated response, but the idea of code-as-design isn't a new  
one in the software development world. There's a classic series of  
essays by Jack Reeves from the early nineties

   http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design_main.html

The whole Model Driven Development community is based around the idea  
that you can do round-trip-design between code and models, and that's  
been POV has been around since at least the mid-eighties:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_Driven_Engineering

and the Domain Driven Design folk are very hot on mapping the domain  
into code

   http://www.domaindrivendesign.org/

And, of course, some of the agile methodologies (Which really aren't  
that recent. They're mostly codifying techniques that successful  
development teams have been using for some time) use this approach  
very effectively.

Cheers,

Adrian