Peopleware Papers: Notes on the Human Side of Software, The

Chapter 25. The Seams Are Showing

Now and then, in a few of the old schlock science-fiction films, one will catch a glimpse of stitches or a zipper running down the back of an alien mutant's supposed skin. In object-oriented software development, despite frequent claims to the contrary, the seams are often no less visible than on the shoddily costumed bug-eyed denizens of a cheap sci-fi flick. If we judge the process by the end product, the promise of seamless object-oriented development remains largely unfulfilled.

Seamless development, according to the modern mythology of object technology, delivers better software through a simpler process. How? One common and consistent set of constructs—the concepts of the application domain as construed by ...