RE: Explicit Ordering, was RE: Definition of Choreography

David,

Actually, come to think of it, JSP is full of stuff that tries
to "simplify for the non-programmer" by using declarative syntax
instead of the supposedly more arcane procedural stuff.  I'm
thinking of stuff like "jsp:useBean" and so on.  So apparently
some people think declarative is "easier".  What a mixed up world.

Cheers,
Walden

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Orchard [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 3:23 PM
> To: 'Mathews, Walden'; [email protected]
> Subject: Explicit Ordering, was RE: Definition of Choreography
> 
> 
> Walden,
> 
> Of course J2EE platforms offer declarative transactions and 
> security, whilst
> offering JSP pages.  That's because no 1 solution is right 
> for everything.
> My point was that if you want to target a certain skill-set 
> of user, you use
> different syntaxes.  I opine that there are MANY more people 
> that actively
> author JSP pages than are those that administer complex 
> security realms.
> And plus all the security people have been trained to think 
> in terms of
> Assertions :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]]On
> > Behalf Of Mathews, Walden
> > Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 3:19 PM
> > To: 'David Orchard '; '[email protected] '
> > Subject: RE: Definition of Choreography
> >
> >
> >
> > David,
> >
> > >This is a classic religious argument.  In the same way there are
> > >religious
> > >battles over big-endian vs little-endian, strongly-typed vs
> > >weakly-typed,
> > >interpreted vs compiled, etc., there will be battles of "condition
> > >based" vs
> > >"explicit ordering".
> >
> > That can be said of any argument that avoids specific test cases,
> > but for this argument, the invitations for test cases have been
> > issued already.  There is a ball in someone's court...
> >
> >
> >
> > >While it is certainly true that condition based
> > >can
> > >meet all the ordering requirements, there is an issue around
> > usability.
> > >For
> > >example, I think coding up JSPs (explicit ordering) is 
> about twice as
> > >easy
> > >as XSLT (mostly condition based).  And I also have a metric
> > that every
> > >time
> > >you double the complexity, you lose 90% of the developers.
> >
> > You're assuming that "easy" means "simple" here, but it 
> doesn't.  JSP
> > is easier because of habit, not because it's simpler.  The
> > mental skills
> > for declarative specification are probably lacking some in
> > the workforce.
> > But I find it ironic that the same platform that brings you JSP also
> > offers things like "declarative transaction" and "declarative
> > security",
> > which are what you call condition-based forms of specification.
> >
> > So, there's at least a tradeoff to consider: simpler but less
> > intuitive
> > specifications - or - unmanageably complex specifications for
> > a workforce
> > that can go on with its current set of skills.  (Who wants to
> > go on with
> > just their *current* set of skills?!?)
> >
> > Any programmer who's learned SQL has already more than half bridged
> > the gap you're concerned about, I think (provided they can 
> accomplish
> > work on databased without using cursors ;-).
> >
> > Walden Mathews
> >
> >
>