The Cagle Principles

If you don’t subscribe to Kurt Cagle’s Metaphorical Newsletter, you might want to stop by and read his latest entry.  The section on Event Loops, XSLT, and XForms is a must read for anyone playing on the fringe of XML development and functional programming.  It reaffirms my ideas of SVG as a meta language for GUIs.

In the Code Gen Redux section (which all the pro code gen folks should read), Kurt explains his 3 principles of coding:

1) The degree of complexity of a problem can never be reduced; it can only be transferred from one location to another within the solution.
2) The complexity of a problem usually does not reside in that part which insures the validity of the model, but instead determines the reasonableness of the model.
3) Validation code is highly structured, reasonableness code is highly relational.

Now the first principal I know I’ve read something similar somewhere else, but I can’t remember where.  But overall the ideas are still valid.

Kurt also gives his definition of what a programmer is:

A person who is able to discern the patterns of automation and then build applications to exploit those patterns.

Kurt has opened up his Yahoo Group for discussion, so if you have something to say, post it there.

DonXML
[Listening to: It's On The Rocks - The Donnas ]