Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software

Looking Forward
Weather, ecosystems, and biology used to be considered messy, "soft" fields in contrast to physics
or chemistry. Recently, however, people have recognized that the appearance of "messiness" in
fact presents a profound technical challenge to discover and understand the order in these very
complex phenomena. The field called "complexity" is the vanguard of many sciences. Although
purely technological tasks have generally seemed most interesting and challenging to talented
software engineers, domain-driven design opens up a new area of challenge that is at least equal.
Business software does not have to be a bolted-together mess. Wrestling a complex domain into a
comprehensible software design is an exciting challenge for strong technical people.
We are nowhere near the era of laypeople creating complex software that works. Armies of
programmers with rudimentary skills can produce certain kinds of software, but not the kind that
saves a company in its eleventh hour. What is needed is for tool builders to put their minds to the
task of extending the power and productivity of talented software developers. What is needed are
sharper ways of exploring domain models and expressing them in working software. I look forward
to experimenting with new tools and technologies devised for this purpose.
But though improved tools will be valuable, we mustn't get distracted by them and lose sight of
the core fact that creating good software is a learning and thinking activity. Modeling requires
imagination and self-discipline. Tools that help us think or avoid distraction are good. Efforts to
automate what must be the product of thought are naive and counterproductive.
With the tools and technology we already have, we can build systems much more valuable than
most projects do today. We can write software that is a pleasure to use and a pleasure to work on,
software that doesn't box us in as it grows but creates new opportunities and continues to add
value for its owners.
[ Team LiB ]

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[ Team LiB ]