Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Enterprisey architecture

James McGovern wonders—in the third person—is James McGovern too Enterprisey? First, I wonder if he understands the origin of the word enterprisey and that it’s actually not intended as a complement. Having ignored that clue, we shall continue on with his proffered thoughts.

I am still wondering what it means to be too enterprisey?

Too be “enterprisey” at all is a bad thing. It means you favor baroque gobblety-gook buzzword-driven “architecture” over actual cluefulness. It means you “talk a good game,” but like the guy at the corner bar who rants about how their team’s pitcher sucks and how thus-and-such is wrong with them, you can’t throw the ball.

I wonder if folks have noticed that I encourage other enterprise architects to also blog?

Yay, more noise. :-) It’s like a Dick Cheney organized hunt.

Most folks in enterprises also for the most part have seemed to miss the whole point behind the open source movement and think it is all about free (in terms of price) software. I wonder if I am too enterprisey if I have been savage in getting folks to understand alternative perspectives on open source.

Here, Mr. McGovern makes a good observation. People have confused “free as in beer” and “free as in speech” and only examined the former, and ignored the latter as it impacts their capabilities. The one-time cost of software is often irrelevent when put in the context of TCO and ROI. Microsoft Windows doesn’t cost much, but the dependencies and on-going support costs, upgrade costs, virus defenses, and other accoutrement that I am forced to buy as a result are much larger burdens on an enterprise. So is it with forced upgrades, and my favorite: bugs that never get fixed. Ever.

Likewise, most folks in enterprises have no sense of community whatsoever and never really share what they learn with others. The hoarding of knowledge within enterprises is rampant but not where I work.

This problem is also endemic to all organizations. People think their knowledge and ideas are original. They’re not, usually. I find sharing knowledge to be the most powerful thing I can do with people. Sharing an experience—whether positive or negative—is critical to not wasting other people’s time.

Maybe I have it twisted in that most enterprises nowadays really aren’t writing lots of appications from scratch reducing the potential for Ruby to be adopted and that their real problem is in building the extended enterprise where they need to make one system communicate with another either internally or with their business partners.

Well, my experience, with both government and commercial customers, is that COTS solutions are perceived as always cheaper than custom solutions. This is the case many times, but not always. I know several large organizations who built entire custom ERP systems for less than just the license costs of one of the big players, and ended up with someone in less time that does more. The presumption of truth is dangerous in all discussions.

The one thing I think that makes me too enterprisey is that I have strong opinions on something that are usually backed up with facts.

Oh now we’ve fallen off the tracks and gone aground¹. Mr. McGovern has not backed up many of his “strong opinions” with anything that one might objectively call “facts.” Saying that Ruby doesn’t have instance variables—something he later invisibly retracted—is most certainly a demonstrably false statement that is inflamatory at best, clueless at worst. So let’s just say he has strong opinions, often somehow related to facts, but not necessarily on a parallel track.

Sorry to bust folks bubble in that Ruby will never follow the path that Java has taken.

I sure hope he’s right. Java is a train-wreck. Too big to fail, too many people’s egos and professional careers tied to its success for people to admit that it’s just simply the wrong tool for the job. Sun had the right people to make it a brilliant thing, but for whatever reason—Alan Kay believes marketing silliness—it turned into a disaster of brain-dead proportions. Since then, it’s been like Frankenstein’s monster with various doo-dads and gee-gaws attached to it to try and make it presentable. More isn’t better: it’s just more.

Java wasn’t selected for productivity reasons.

Ain’t that the truth. It was selected for PHB marketing reasons in many cases, resume-driven architecture in others. A silver bullet for all that ails you. And dancing web animations too.

What is it you truly always wanted to know about us folks in large enterprises but were always afraid to ask?

Perhaps why, almost universally, there is no self-awareness? That’s my question.

Did you not get the joke?

¹ I love mixed metaphors.