CFObjective: Day 2 - Sustainable Apps with Framewo

Matt Woodward

Overview of building sustainable apps using Frameworks.  Focusing on Mach II, but applicable to all frameworks.
Kevin Tate - "Sustainable Software Development" - Good book to check out.


Technical Debt - builds up over time, gets worse as more changes are made.  Extremely hard to pay back.


Keys to Sustainable Dev

• Working product at all times - daily builds, small chunks
• End user is always involved
• Test driven development
• Uncompromising standards for code quality - I agree!!
• Avoid over designing app - only build what is needed
• Okay to abandon pieces that aren't working

Principles and Practices

• FLiP
• UI Prototypes and user involvement - Getting Real
• Code for platform independence - meaning don't hard code file system paths (use CF path functions), be strict on case and naming.  What if we switch to Linux?

Frameworks will sort of force you into OO and MVC.
XML config file in frameworks provides you with a roadmap of the app.  New devs can quickly see what the app does.