http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660Nice Blog... http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment41http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment41Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:07:25 GMT@Tim, as many have pointed out, we all have written awful codes, or done horrible things. Problem is when they are explicitely published as _the_ official guidance of _the_ correct way we should follow. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment40http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment40Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:30:13 GMTTim, Glass house? Absolutes? Theories? By this time, I believe that I have about a substantial amount of code in the open. Several hundreds of thousand of lines of code, as a matter of fact. I think that I can safely say that what I am practicing what I am doing. As for the rest, to be perfectly frank, I am not going to start laying the foundation of OO, structured programming or basic code structure organization in this blog. It is assumed that you are familiar with them if you read what I write. As for painting, Art is subjective, but we aren't talking about anything subjective here, you realize, those are objective metrics that the code base fail to measure up against http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment39http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment39Sun, 19 Apr 2009 06:19:47 GMTGuess I just never ran into a full LOB application written by you or any of the other glass-house developers that demand absolutes and follow theories and ideas from the 60s. I simply feel it's better to teach than to deride - but to each his or her own. Subjectively, I would argue that the first method isn't "very busy", albeit busy. I've seen huge methods that would dwarf that. Would I take that method and refactor it if it was a production system that had been running for a year and I didn't need to modify anything in it? Nope. Wouldn't bother me a bit to leave it as is... For some, the finished painting is more important than the brush strokes - and others the brush strokes are the art itself... so again, to each his or her own. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment38http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment38Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:38:33 GMTTim, Some things _are_ basic. I am not going to repeat advice about STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING that can be traced back to the 60s! Avoid long methods? Reduce method complexity? Avoid magic values? Don't have methods that does umpteen things? http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment37http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment37Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:02:10 GMTAyende, It was not really you I was in a tirade about, actually. Mostly it's the comments that follow; however, I still believe it would be better to not just rip code because of what *you* beleive to be basic. There are many out and about that are looking for good examples/best practices. It does *NO ONE* any good to take a piece of code and say "That Sucks!" and not explain why or show a better way to do it. Better yet - show best practices on the offending method! Otherwise, you really are just pointing fingers and not really helping the people that really need it. Right? If everyone that read your blog already new how to do it properly, then... why read your blog? I supposed the offending line to me was: "I am going to show them both in all their glory, and let you be the judge of them:" what if I *can't* be the judge, and they look fine to me? BTW - it's GREAT to see that they took back the sample (or so I saw when I went to download it) to revamp it. I don't follow blogs much at all, but I certainly recognize coming to this one often - so you are obviously one of my favorites and I don't mean to offend! -Tim http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment36http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment36Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:07:12 GMTIn my (not-so-humble) opinion, the problem isn't that the code is horrid. If it were something intended to be *used*, then horrid code would be almost excusable (with time pressure, etc). The problem is that Microsoft seems to be pointing at this and explicitly saying "this is how it should be done". When code this bad is held up as the standard, it speaks volumes about the technology itself. (That's why my coworkers refuse to use ASP.NET MVC; the sample code they've seen has been almost as bad.) The people who designed the technology should have been the ones to write a sample app. I concur with Arthur: the best developers should be writing the sample code, so the lesser developers (such as myself) have a good resource to learn from. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment35http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment35Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:36:50 GMT@rob OK there was more than a slight tone of sarcasm in my comment :) My point is that whilst OK... asp.net MVC is a new technology, it's by no means a new concept. So any web developer worth their salt should have at least a passing understanding. Especially web developers residing at Microsoft. Or so you would think. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment34http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment34Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:37:47 GMTdata as object, null as T I have not laughed that hard in a very long time. Thanks, I needed that. There are some good samples out there and it's going to depend on your style which one you're going to like best. Take a look at: CodeCampServer atomsite kigg http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment33http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment33Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:38:13 GMTFor those of you looking for a sample, try: [http://code.google.com/p/sharp-architecture/](http://code.google.com/p/sharp-architecture/) Sharp Architecture by Billy McCafferty, et. al. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment32http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment32Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:52:31 GMTLove it when people gather in flocks - and you can feel free to STEP RIGHT OFF MY BACK on this one. No - MVC isn't NEW. ASP.NET MVC is. Internally, that means MVC for the web is NEW because they're used to web forms. I think I deserve a bit more credit then being framed like an MS dolt. Back to your regularly scheduled rants :). http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment31http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment31Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:49:31 GMTTim, The topics that are discussed here are NOT things that weren't done "exactly" the way I want them. They are deep, fundamentals, BASIC programming errors. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment30http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment30Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:45:37 GMTAyende, looks like your new best friend at [codeproject](http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/OptLocking_PrefixTable.aspx) was the project lead on this. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment29http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment29Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:32:14 GMTIt is unfortunate that code goes out that isn't "EXACTLY" the way you/me/or someone else would have written it. Because we all know that there is but one way in which to code things - that way, is "correctly". But some of the arguments and whining that occurs is somewhat pathetic. Software developers need to take a deep breath and move on with their existence! Sheesh! I don't know of another industry where the practitioners are so bloody pissy about anything that isn't "theirs". By arguments made in the comments above - everyone should just grasp MVC without issue, as it's not been invented by Microsoft and has existed for many, many years. And just because you may have grown through classic ASP, and ASP.Net 1.1 webforms, you should immediately drop all knowledge and simply code "Correctly", which, isn't documented anywhere - people are just supposed to GRASP it. Give it up people! Coding correctly is in direct relation to the time management allows for research/learning and project deadlines. Differential Mathematics is arguably one of the most difficult practices to grasp - to some almighty "developers", it would appear that if one can't grasp the concept, then they should just completely stop doing math OR Learn it! Well - one doesn't *have* to learn it to get through life... Guess what people - just because a method has more than "five" lines of code, doesn't make it evil. The arbitrary numbers from Simbian are meant to be something to look into by a subjective PERSON. taking statistics as in the above post is bad form, IMO. Nevertheless, the super-guru-absolutely-never-wrote-a-bad-line-of-code-in-my-life devs above point out valid facts regarding the code - I just think attitude towards teaching others is better than reprimanding and being a git about it. Also - amazingly, there are a ton of devs here that claim to have perfected development (all over the web, actually) - I've yet to see an actual, usable, LOB application that takes into account every best practice possible. Perhaps taking the time to write a tutorial would better suit your time than traversing the net and posting to others examples? Just a thought. And yes - I suck. I don't do TDD (Although I am researching it and will probably do it all wrong), I LOVE WCSF and WCF and ADO.Net Entities, but probably code it "ALL WRONG". I believe ASP.Net MVC isn't even close to handling the LOB apps that I write, but I get paid, and my products are capable of running thousands of concurrent users through them without failing. Sue me. Next year - my code won't look anything like it does today (except true standards/guidelines), as the next ORM, Framework, whatever will be out and about as well as VS 2010 and .Net 4.0, and ASP.Net MVC V 3.221.9. You may say "Hope I don't run into 'Your' Code"... but the fact is - you probably already have... and you survived just fine. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment28http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment28Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:08:02 GMT@Rob Conery Rob, the problem is your team should have met with them BEFORE they pushed this out there. The damage is done now. There should be a rule of rules that if someone in some random team is going to put out guidance and a kit like this that it should go through a series of things: 1. Call the guys who wrote it who's job it is to preach about it (You, Phil, ScottHa, etc) 2. Put out feedback to members of the community 3. Rinse and repeat. Cheers, -Keith http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment27http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment27Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:56:00 GMTLook, we've all written a lot of crappy code; we've all read a lot of crappy code. I'm sure MS engineers also read and write a lot of crappy code. But the critical point here is that MS SHOULD NOT deliver crappy code in a sample application. You need your BEST engineers working on sample apps--let your junior devs work on the marketing sites. The sample apps are used for teaching and learning best practices. Its disturbing to think that a lot of young developers will turn to this app assuming that they'll be seeing the correct and best way to develop an MVC app on the MS platform. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment26http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment26Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:05:59 GMTOuch, that's awful! I found it hard to read your blog, I don't think I could read any more so I wont bother downloading the demo :-) http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment25http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment25Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:25:50 GMTHaving some experience with offshore outsourcing, this is exactly the kind of [dare I say] code I'v come to expect - always requiring a great deal of refactoring. Please, don't tell me this was from someone in the mothership... http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment24http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment24Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:19:56 GMTI couldn't even finish this.. that code gave me a headache. Too much going on in a controller. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment23http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment23Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:07:15 GMTMVC or Webforms, Kobe is really horrible. Coming from Java to ASP.NET I still can't believe how coding inconsistencies thrive in the .NET world. I would really like to know any project that this same "kobe" team has worked on. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment22http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment22Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:49:47 GMT(I had a long apology written, until I noticed that the people talking to "Ben" weren't talking to me. If anyone took offense at my comment, I apologize anyway.) @James: I see. Rails did more to popularize the paradigm than other frameworks, even though it didn't originate there. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment21http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment21Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:30:28 GMT@Benjamin Geiger I think it goes further back than Ruby on Rails, see the Java frameworks Struts and Spring. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment20http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment20Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:36:40 GMTKarl, Consistency _matters_, no two ways about it. But I feel that focusing on _that_ when you have a code base that looks like Kobe is doing injustice. It is putting a plaster instead of putting tourniquet. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment19http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment19Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:23:36 GMT@Ben I think Rob´s comment was clear, people inside his organization was trying to get a better grasp on MVC and MVC in this particular incarnation. It is not like they invented it. No need to pick on a simple comment. @Joannes Probably someone put his name too fast on a work executed by others? Wouldn´t be the first time. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment18http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment18Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:17:46 GMT@Ben I think @robconery meant that MVC is new to a lot of folks internal to MS. Remember, the MVC concept was new to you once, too. We should keep in mind that what folks like @robconery, @shanselman, & @scottgu are trying to do is change the culture of a very large organization. Change is hard, and they are doing an admirable job of turning the direction of a VERY large ship. It takes time, and there will be mis-steps along the way. Rather than belittle them, we should help them, as Oren is doing with his thoughtful series of critiques. http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment17http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment17Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:11:58 GMTI'm repeating myself a lot, which probably means that I'm wrong but... The nitty gritty does matter. Google and Java list consistent use of coding styles as a key factor in readable and maintainable systems. Apple has made a business out of consistent UI. I think dismissing the least-consistent coding-style I've ever seen in order to go after more fundamental issues is a wrong. There's no reason not to be equally harsh on both. Also, I've been there and done that with Oxite. I've detailed some of the more fundamental problems. Kobe has those same problems, I just listed them off. We touched on the same issues, horrible controllers, lack of business logic, poor exception handling and stupid data access patterns. I think you are being harsh on my review :P http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment16http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment16Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:43:05 GMTI think the issue is the overloading of vocabulary. "MVC", the design pattern, started with Smalltalk and was gradually refined. "MVC", the Web application architecture (?), probably started with---and was definitely popularized by---Ruby on Rails. "MVC", the abbreviation for "ASP.NET MVC", is basically "Rails.NET", and from what I understand (not having taken *too* close a look at it) it's basically a direct clone of MonoRail (which itself draws heavily from Rails, hence the name). So, MVC isn't new, and MVC isn't new, and MVC is sorta new, but only in areas where Microsoft broke it. Got it? (There'll be a short quiz on this next period.) http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment15http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment15Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:27:23 GMT@Barry, I too feel the same. If this is the code coming from MS ;) http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment14http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment14Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:26:05 GMT@robconery: MVC is new? So you think MVC wasn't around until Microsoft "invented" it? http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment13http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment13Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:05:52 GMT@Rik MVC StoreFront by Rob Conery is a good and solid MVC sample S#arp architecture is good - possibly not in a style I would choose personally Suteki Shop isn't bad Apart from that - Cuyahoga on Monorail is a good MVC sample app - much applies to ASP.NET MVC too http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment12http://ayende.com/3949/kobe-in-the-nuts-bolts-and-don-t-really-liking-it#comment12Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:58:42 GMT