Back to basics

One of the projects that I work on involves customization and modification of an existing system. The original system was however not architected for change. Beyond the rather long list of architectural and implementation issues that surround the system, one of my colleagues noted that the system was really a world by itself. This brought me back to the thought that larger systems have organic aspects to them.

In the end, simple organisms are favored above complex organisms when disaster strikes. Cockroaches are for example more likely to survive nuclear holocaust than humans. Are simple applications more likely to do well in a changing environment? I have lately been leaning strongly toward limiting custom frameworks and not 'over architecting' applications. The closer you can stay to mainstream constructs that you can expect any programmer to know, the better. As part of the 'less is more' strategy, I have for example ensured that the interaction with Windows Identity Foundation is completely transpartent to the programmer. We have also started to refocus on basic concepts, like encapsulation, contracts and decoupling and making the developer aware of these concepts in an intuitive way through the IDE. I understand why the industry aspires to extreme test driven continuous integrated agile development :), but I also don't want to loose sight of the basics.