Keith Devens .com - Weblog: "Enterprise" application development

Saturday, January 21, 2006

"Enterprise" application development

I scoff every time I hear someone make claims about their framework enabling you to write "enterprise class applications" (via) or some such. As if merely the way you structure your code on one computer will make such a difference in "scaling for the enterprise". As Phil Smoot says, you have to rely on "scale out".

The only frameworks that can legitimately claim to help you write "enterprise applications" are those that help you distribute your app, like, say, Google's MapReduce. In fact, applications that do better at "scaling up" (as opposed to "scaling out", in Smoot's terms) often have less structure, not more. Things like embedding your web server into your kernel and writing everything in C.

Permalink | 1 Comment | Tags: Programming | id 7867

11:44 (utc-6)
edited: 11:45 (utc-6)

Comments

Hannibal wrote:

Enterprise application development to me isn't about issues of scale, but rather issues of flexibility. You have to move fast and be very adaptive to survive in the corporate world. Your applications can't be brittle.

If you write fast, lean, efficient code with good tools like .NET and SQL Server, scaling is rarely an issue.

Frameworks usually do nothing more than force you to spend a lot of time messing around with somebody else's code.

∴ Hannibal | 23-Jan-2006 8:22pm est | #9050

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