From: Sascha Ebach <se@...>
Date: 2004-09-05T07:26:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Anyone using Copland? I need feedback!

Hi Jamis,

> Lots of sense. As I said in my reply to Hal, though, IoC really benefits 
> large applications more than small ones. However, the 0.6.0 release of 
> Copland has a "real world" example application of a Calculator 
> implemented using IoC. (I put "real world" in quotes, because although 
> it demonstrates the techniques of programming with IoC, it's not the way 
> you'd really want to do a trivial calculator program.)

Ah, I stumbled upon this, but when I got through with the docs I forgot 
about it. Maybe you could put a sentence at the bottom of each example 
like: "For a small example program implemented with IoC see the examples 
dear of the distribution" or similiar. Will have a look at it.

> Also, the documentation in CVS (which will be released with 0.7.0, very 
> soon) includes a couple more tutorials (bringing the total to 4). The 
> tutorials since the rewrite are, I think, much more applicable than 
> before--I don't know how recently you've looked at the Copland docs.

I read the docs multiple times. Since 0.3 I think. So also the latest.

> Still--I'll see if I can't think of a nice, large, "real world" example 
> of IoC (specifically, using Copland) and then see if I can find a good 
> way to present it in the documentation. Ironically, I don't have any 
> large examples using Copland, although I've got a couple in mind that I 
> keep intending to start "as soon as I'm done with Copland." ;)

The thing with building frameworks not alongside a real application is 
that you usually rewrite the whole thing alot (ring a bell? ;). 
Shouldn't the framework be built around / from a real world application 
just like DHH did with Basecamp and Rails? At least that is the advice I 
always read about in books of well known authors ;)

You wouldn't have to actually implement a complete large application. 
But I suspect you could easily get to a point where you could say: "See, 
if I do this the traditional way I end up writing 10000 lines of code 
for 100 services/adapters, with Copland it only takes me 2000 lines of 
YAML and 1000 lines of Ruby." Now this would be an argument for me to 
"buy in".

>> Using DI seems to me like a little more than just using the next 
>> library. Maybe it is not such a big paradigm as TDD, but it seems like 
>> a certain way of programming that needs a little more explanation than 
>> the usual stuff. I really wonder how I could benefit from that.
>>
> 
> Thanks for the feedback, Sascha. I'll do some thinking, too. I'll see if 
> I can find a better way to present IoC.

This might sound funny, but I think you would have to sell the idea 
more. Like TDD is sold by saying that

- overall development is faster, less debugging, you know when you are ready
- more confidence in the code
- higher quality of code
- ...

What is the main reason for using DI? Is it to produce the same 
functionality with less lines of code? Which is always excellent. In the 
example you say that "unit testing is beyond the scope of this 
tutorial." This actually disappointed me cause I hoped to understand it 
better if I would see some tests. Wouldn't this be just another 
paragraph or two (writing 1 or 2 test classes)? Or maybe you plan to do 
a complete example about the way you unit test IoC containers 
(environments)? Testing is using ...

I am looking forward to seeing Copland evolve and hope that I can get 
around using it soon.

-- 
Sascha Ebach