Chacham's Journal: Link of the Day: Minimize Code, Maximize Data

Kenneth Downs has an entry in his blog, "The Database Programmer", in which he lists the mantra "Minimize Code, Maximize Data".

I don't like his writing style, but the point is good.

a dumb mantra

[Bill Dog]

More like "think about design before you code, and then do it in the simplest, cleanest way possible". And "for simple rule-application scenarios, consider codifying the rules as data and then writing generic functions that apply them".

So his problem happened to perfectly fit his pet approach. But because his developer wrote unreadable code doesn't make this approach any more widely-applicable. But I guess if all you work with is nails, the hammer is always the right tool.

But I do wish we in tech could get

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Database programming or otherwise, managing the proper amount of state is the Holy Grail of a good system.
Confusion about "what" was known "when" seems to drive most of the problems I've seen.
The most refined example I can think of is GNU Autotools. *shudder*
Even though I can track what it's doing at a high level, the information flow in that beast, trying to boil the project description down to the simplest set of declarative statements possible, is mind boggling.
For non-technical folks, I always poin