Is emergent design possible? (I think it is!)

Just the other day I had a discussion with a really experienced lead developer about the feasibility of the no-big-design-up-front-approach and the necessary circumstances to make emergent design work.

Along comes these series of articles from Abby Fichtner that I stumbled upon last night.

And although there's more to emergent design than Bob Martins SOLID principles I think these articles make an excellent starting point for a deeper discussion of the subject.

• SOLID Code with Emergent Design - Part 1
• SOLID Code with Emergent Design - Gimme an S
• SOLID Code with Emergent Design - O, I get it
• SOLID Code with Emergent Design - The L
• SOLID Code with Emergent Design - The Other ISP
• SOLID Code with Emergent Design - The Final Chapter

Cheerio

MM

Something completely different - Software I'd really love to buy...

...if it only existed...

(Mac mandatory of course)

• A word processor that really separates style and content - and still has a wysiwyg interface.
• A content managements system that does the same - minus the wysiwyg and plus a clear separation between content management (code) and delivery (from a pure static server, as they are available as commodity nowadays)
• Access done right -
  
  1. For the Mac
  2. For different backends (mySQL, posgreSQL, SQLite, ...)
  3. Less Wizards - more ER-Modelling
  4. Keep the grid view, the forms and (especially) the reports
• A stand-alone, sql-based, cross report generator with pdf (and perhaps rtf) as target format
• A format translator for Text-Files for all the different formats people want out there. Just feed in the Markdown, MultiMarkdown or Asciidoc Styles on one side, match them up with the respective publishers Word, LaTex or openOffice styles and ... presto - your final draft comes out

... wanted to do all of these myself ... never found the time (of course) ... so, if anybody out there is just looking for a cool idea for her next project - feel free to implement any or all of the above...

Cheerio

Michael

Oh, and BTW: I'd volunteer as beta tester...