The Code-First Dictum

Traditional wisdom says that the "code first, design later" approach is a bad idea. However, Charles Miller points out that when it comes to open source projects, it's mandatory:


This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/05/the-code-first-dictum.html

Interesting. This reminds me of Joel Spolsky’s Chicken and Egg Problems:

“So. If you’re in the platform creation business, you are probably going to suffer from what is commonly known as the chicken and egg problem. Nobody is going to buy your platform until there’s good software that runs on it, and nobody is going to write software until you have a big installed base. Ooops. It’s sort of like a Gordian Knot, although a Gordian Death Spiral might be more descriptive.” - a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html"http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html/a

So, in other words, it’s better to post a chicken on SourceForge than an egg. Or is it the other way around? :wink: