Shared Source CLI Essentials

Chapter 1. Introducing the CLI Component Model

The programmer of the 21^st century has a lot to worry about.

For one thing, useful software is far more complex than ever before. No longer is it acceptable to simply, present a simple terminal-based command prompt or a character-based user interface; users now demand rich, graphical user interfaces with all sorts of visual goodies. Data can seldom be structured to fit in flat files in a local filesystem; instead, the use of a relational database is often required to support the query and reporting requirements that computer users have come to depend on, as well as the ongoing transformations that shape and reshape long-lived data. A single computer once sufficed for application deployment, on which data sharing was accomplished using files or the clipboard; now most computers on the planet are wired for networking, and the software deployed on them must not only be network-aware, but must also be ready to adapt to changing network conditions. In short, building software has moved beyond being a craft that can be practiced by skilled individuals in isolation; it has become a group activity, based on ever more sophisticated underlying infrastructure.

Programmers no longer have the luxury of being able to complete an entire project from scratch, using tools that are close to the processor, such as assemblers or C compilers. Few have the time or the patience to write intermediate infrastructure, even for things as simple as an HTTP implementation ...