I was wondering, does anyone here have anything interesting to say about flat files for data storage ? Recommended reading, tips, tricks and advanced concepts...
You see, I'm not a big fan of relational databases. I do understand them very well, actually I pay my bills by working on a quite big database application, it's just that I like the simplicity and beauty of flat files. And real men don't need DBMS anyway. OK, let's not talk about RDBMS.
Say, which markup language / data serialization format do you like ? Have you used xattrs in any project ?
All of that is hard, but: None of that is really necessary.
Hypothesis: Proper modularization and abstraction actually causes feature bloat, by making new features too easy to add.
Counterpoint: modularization only appears to lead to code bloat because adding features "because they might be needed in the future, although I know of no plan to do so" is so seductive in comparison to doing actual work.
Feature bloat: Who cares? If a feature sucks and nobody uses it, just take the damn thing out again. Life's too short to agonize over these things.
>>12
Do you mean to say that's not how you work, i.e., you can't bear to remove a useless feature, thinking it might be needed in the future?
If so, use version control. That way the old code is always in svn or darcs or whatever if you change your mind.
No, feature bloat is not about useless features. It's about adding features that somebody wants, to the point where the program becomes less usable because there are so many special-purpose features. If it was just removing things nobody uses, it wouldn't be a problem.
>>12
My point is that modularization leading to bloat is more a matter of lacking discipline on the part of the programmer(s) or rather the designer(s), and not of modularization itself.
With perfect discipline and insight, there'd never be a problem. That part is not really interesting. The point is, modularization and abstraction creates the temptation for feature bloat.