Software Design Is Knowledge Building: A Case Study
A company outsourced its integration service to a SaaS provider, then decided to build an in-house replacement, SVC, due to cost concerns. A highly skilled engineer, X10, independently completed SVC's development. However, subsequent teams struggled to maintain and modify the system, experiencing extremely low efficiency. The article analyzes the reason: the output of software development is not code, but the engineers' understanding of the system and its business logic—a 'theory'. After X10 left, the team lacked this 'theory', leading to difficulties in system maintenance, making it like a 'haunted house'. The author argues that software design should focus on knowledge building to facilitate understanding and maintenance by subsequent teams, avoiding the creation of 'legacy systems'.
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