[openbeos] Re: Data or App Centric?

Helmar Rudolph <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 ..
> The concept should be neither data nor app-centric
> but _TASK_ centric. 

How would this work for the ISV or the lone dev man? I mean, we're used 
to a certain way of designing a "complete" application, packaging that 
application, and marketing/publishing/distributing it. What now? Design 
and implementation by committee?..  A True bazaar model?

In a Task-oriented system, who makes what, and how can it be anything 
but chaos? Who takes care of the big picture, and how can an ISV sell 
you a solution when applications are merely sets of disjoint 
components?

Another thing. In my own experience a large amount of all code exists 
only to tie other components together. The idea of making a system of 
only (or primarily)
components, ignores the code which exists to bind the components 
together. The code that makes the components do meaningful things. 
Perhaps this glue code can be seen as the "task logic", if by task you 
mean the use cases of the application as implemented by the author. (I 
imagine all task paths would still have to be pre-designed to some 
degree.) 

Perhaps I should ask what's really bugging me.. What is a Task?.. Isn't 
it something that is primarily virtual, existing in the head of the 
user?.. I see the system as a set of tools which I use to complete 
certain tasks, but the system isn't aware of my task. It doesn't have 
to be. Task-awareness would forever be like that Office clip, trying to 
sell you stuff you don't need. Or trying to push you into some kind of 
action pattern, much like the configuration wizards* we all love to 
hate.

Anyway, I haven't read "the book" so perhaps there's something I'm not 
seeing.

/Jonas Sundström.                www.kirilla.com

* "Tried to run, Tried to hide, Break on through to the other side"
 (The Doors)

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